Xing, the social business network, is dead. Well, not really, but I just canceled my premium account. Why? I just had the pro account for a client project a while back where I had to look up a lot of contact info. Then I forgot to cancel. Big deal? Probably not. But it made me realize that I practically never had any useful exchange over Xing.
I had nearly zero useful personal contacts, but I also had nearly zero business contacts through Xing. And I’ve been on the platform since sometime 2005, I believe. Now I’m not in sales or anything, so maybe I’m not the target group. (Then again, I’m a freelance consultant for web strategies, which would probably put me in the target group. Who knows.)
Mostly, I get invitations to events that I either don’t want to attend or that I had long since been invited to via Facebook or another platform. If I want to talk to someone, Twitter is usually faster and less inconvenient. (The fact that you don’t get the message body via email and have to log in to read messages is in itself enough reason to leave the platform!) And internationally, even a free account on LinkedIn gives you almost as much as a premium account on Xing. (Not that I use LinkedIn much either.)
I haven’t killed my account on Xing altogether. But I’m seriously thinking about it. The only reason I don’t, so far, is that I usually don’t kill any of my online accounts. I tend to letting them phase out, or letting the sun set, as Google called it recently. But if there’s one account I wouldn’t mind killing, it’s my Xing account. And maybe Friendster.
Image: Flickr user junkyard.dogs
