Current Trends in Professional and Social Networking

Hamburg.
Only two more sessions to go at next09... The next one brings together a number of the major professional networking sites, with Kevin Eyres from LinkedIn, Stefan Groß-Selbeck from its German competitor Xing, and Markus Berger-de León from German student networking site StudiVZ (which has also launched a post-studies site, MeinVZ, and a site for schoolkids, SchülerVZ).

Stefan begins by stating that social networking has been the key development in online media over the past few years. In Germany, Xing is a leader of this development, especially in the professional networking context; its business network is moving through the current financial crisis very in a very stable fashion. The current crisis is an opportunity - and the company is confidently planning for its future. Kevin adds that for LinkedIn as a global platform the main challenge is to service the global business community. And he agrees that the crisis has raised the awareness of networking as a crucial element of professional life. By contrast, Markus describes StudiVZ with its strongly German focus as the most truly local networking site of the three. So far, the sites has not yet experienced any impact from the financial crisis - members are as active as they have been previously.

The sites are also different in their payment models - there are no premium accounts on StudiVZ, while these are very important on Xing, so which is the best model? There is no one right answer, Kevin says; it depends on the orientation of the site, and LinkedIn is optimised for use by free members in order to attract as large a number of members as possible (but has also long broken even).

Xing is the opposite model, with strong focus on premium accounts; at the same time, Stefan says, it also has the most active user community, and that is why many users have accepted the need to pay for access. A virtuous cycle has emerged here - the money made from premium accounts also enables rapid further development.

StudiVZ, which is also used in significant way for personal messaging (it is the German Facebook, in a way), is also funded by advertisements - so there is an interesting distinction here: personal networking sites are funded by ads, while professional networking sites are funded by the professionals themselves.

The other two sites are very much platforms for users to create their personal identities - but what is the role of content in that model? With professional networking, it's not about sharing photos or other content, but sharing users' knowledge, and this is central especially as more truly social features (discussion groups, etc.) become part of these sites. In fact, forming groups on these sites is now a key practice, and the tools for group interaction continue to evolve. And the groups themselves become a key source of information again, too.

What about Facebook in this context? Kevin isn't concerned - there still is a very large difference between professional and social networking, and the social features of Facebook (including photo sharing etc.) tend to intrude into and undermine the ability of the site to be used for professional networking. A more interesting question is whether the profiles in any one of these sites can be connected or shared across multiple spaces, and there's a cautious response to this from the panel (presumably because for some it would undermine their business models). They also feel that it is unlikely that this could lead to the development of a single major professional networking site - ultimately, most networking still happens locally, and local differences also mean that different sites may do better in different local markets.

And what about Google's OpenSocial platform? Xing is about to launch OpenSocial functionality shortly, and this will enable tapping into more niche spaces and applications, increasing its utility. Both Xing and LinkedIn are also enhancing the features available to companies, and StudiVZ offers branded pages for companies so that they can engage with user communities. And Twitter? Markus notes that there's substantially more status update activity per minute within the German-based StudiVZ community, using its internal tools, than there is in all of Twitter...

Technorati : LinkedIn, StudiVZ, Xing, business, community, next09, social networking
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