Global business social networking: Xing wins

OK, I think I made a good call on who’s winning the social networking war: I’m convinced that it will be Xing (formerly OpenBC).

I was introduced to OpenBC early on in my MBA here, and to LinkedIn just after I went on exchange to Beijing. Based on my experience with both, I observed that neither is really influential here in Singapore, but that OpenBC was far and away more popular in China. Once OpenBC changed their name to Xing, it was clear to me that they were going to be the winners, and I came out and said so, here.

LinkedIn fought back with its ‘Answers’ service, but I think that’s not enough. It has its defenders, but I thought they were missing the point, as I argued here. (And btw, I take this opportunity to apologise to Jan Meise for not responding to his comment and thoughtful article – sorry, Jan, I was too busy). However, I continued to believe that Xing, with its European background, seemed to have a better grip on the importance of language and localisation than LinkedIn did.

I’ve just seen something that, for me settles the argument:

That’s it. Game over. IBM, Second Life and Xing, all together. There must be something big coming down the pipeline to follow this up.

One thought:

Voice is coming soon to Second Life. Apparently, it will be implemented (in a very interesting way, btw) by Vivox. Still… Xing already has Skype integration; they know how to do this. LinkedIn? No. So I guess there’ll be some behind the scenes talks between Xing and Vivox….

Where can LinkedIn go to rival this? WoW and SKype? Hardly. So, my bet: Xing wins, big time, and globally.

And since I’m sure someone will ask, I have no stock or other financial interest in Xing, LinkedIn, IBM, or any other company mentioned here (save only that as I’ve said before, I’ve been willing for nearly 2 years to pay for premium membership of Xing, but couldn’t justify it for LinkedIn).