I wrote about this not so long ago, so it was interesting to find an article via memeorandum by Carsten Cumbrowski: “Europes Xing.com – The LinkedIn.com Killer?!“. It’s a good article, but he completely misses the Asian aspect that is actually the most important feature of what’s going on in the competition between the two networks. I tried to leave a comment, but only get a blank page, so here’s what I wrote:
Carsten, great article and I agree with your analysis.
You’ve missed one (big) aspect of the story, though, which is the Asia effect. I’m in Singapore, where neither network has really taken off. However, I’ve just got back from over a year in China; OpenBC was very popular, whereas nobody I knew used LinkedIn – perhpas because the Chinese are very price-sensitive.
“Xing” isn’t just a “generic and neutral” name; it’s a Chinese word, carefully chosen. I guess the OpenBC saw the way the wind was blowing and adjusted to suit the market… LinkedIn may adapt as you suggest, but they’ve without doubt lost out to OpenBC/Xing’s first mover advantage in China.
I wrote more about this on my blog, if you’re interested: http://trigram.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/social-networks-the-china-effect/
Emlyn,
I agree with you that XING has the first mover advantage in Asia (as well as in Germany) but the challenge is, that only a few people this in Europe and America will be able to communicate and build an effective network in Chinese and German.
English is the world business language and while XING might have an advantage at the start to offer different languages this might hinder them in the long run;
Still a very interesting article and I would hope that LinkedIn is using some of their recent VC money to expand in Germany and Asia
Thx Jan