XING slowly falling behind LinkedIn in home country of Germany

One of the top social networks in Germany is the business-oriented XING. Created in 2003 by Lars Hinrich of Hamburg, the network allows users to find and keep in touch with business contacts. Although it has over six million users in Germany, it is far less popular than the American site LinkedIn across the world. Now, even in its homeland, XING is holding on for dear life as it attempts to remain relevant.

XING vs. LinkedIn in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

As of this past April, the two networks were fairly comparable in membership across the three DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). XING still maintains the edge in its founding country of Germany, it has trailed LinkedIn in Austria since 2014 and Switzerland since 2010. Even in Germany, LinkedIn has taken the lead in terms of online traffic and mobile hits, but XING has been able to remain competitive in the region for quite some time.

LinkedIn vs. XING in DACH  and non-DACH countries

Outside of the primary German-speaking countries, however, there isn't even a competition. Four countries (USA, India, Brazil and the United Kingdom) have more LinkedIn users than XING has in total. LinkedIn is Goliath, and XING merely aspires to be David. In the corporate world, David hardly ever wins, but that doesn't mean he can't put together an impressive showing.

XING's features, rise to prominence and eventual stagnation

XING has both a free basic membership and a premium membership that varies in price as a result of billing interval and the user's native country. With a basic membership, one can create a profile, join groups, and find and connect with other people. Premium memberships allow for looking up someone with specific qualifications and messaging people with whom the user isn't already connected. XING also has closed communities, and this feature makes it popular with corporations like IBM and Accenture.

Lars Hinrich created the Open Business Club in August 2003, and the site was launched on Nov. 1 of that year. Over time, it grew steadily in popularity, reaching 1.5 million users by July 2006. Hinrich renamed the platform to XING (pronounced "zing") in November of 2006 and took it public in December. For nearly three years, the site was very profitable.

Hinrich sold his stake to Burda in 2009, thus resigning as the company's CEO and joining the board of directors. He left XING altogether in 2010 and started up a new pre-seed fund called HackFwd.

Stefan Gross-Selbeck succeeded Hinrich as XING's CEO, and Thomas Vollmoeller has been at the helm since 2012. The platform is still mainly rooted in Germany and its surrounding countries; its inability to expand across Europe and the rest of the world has prevented it from becoming much more than a local fad, albeit a largely successful one.

The dominance of LinkedIn

LinkedIn was founded by California's Reid Hoffman in December 2002, less than a year earlier than XING. The site launched in May 2003, and within five years had an approximate value of $1 million. It traded its first shares on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2011. Today, the network has hundreds of millions of users in nearly every country, nearly five times as much as its closest competitor, which isn't even XING—it's Viadeo, founded in Paris in 2004 and more popular across most of non-German speaking Europe than XING.

LinkedIn is able to profit by selling access to its users' information to recruiters; smaller networks wouldn't be able to do this to the same extent. LinkedIn makes more money off of ads than even Twitter; XING can't come close. Capitalism is a cruel thing.

In StudiVZ, there is precedent for a German social network falling short

There have long been rumblings that XING would be swallowed up by LinkedIn, as the American behemoth seems to build towards a monopoly. It's unlikely that this will happen, but if it did, it wouldn't be the first time.

StudiVZ was created by two German students in Berlin in October 2005. The name is an abbreviation for the German phrase that translates to "student's directory." It was admittedly derived from Facebook, which had launched just over a year earlier. StudiVZ's features are similar to those of Facebook: users create and update a personal page, and can find others with similar interests via the search button. There is also a private messaging service and a birthday reminder, and two are also strikingly similar in appearance.

Facebook first learned about the German network in 2006, and for two years send sporadic demand letters accusing StudiVZ of intellectual property theft. Facebook then tried to purchase StudiVZ's websites, but to no avail. On July 18, 2008, Facebook filed a federal lawsuit. The case was brought to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, which in May 2009 ruled that Germany was a more convenient forum for the case because both networks had a reasonable presence there. The German court ruled in favor of StudiVZ, but the negative publicity would soon take its toll. After peaking at roughly six million users in late 2009, the network steadily declined until closing for good in April 2013. Any such downfall for XING will likely not include litigation.

Social media still on the rise in Germany (and the rest of the world)

The rest of the German social media landscape looks similar to that of the United States. Facebook is the country's top social network: 35 percent of German citizens have an account. Google+ is near the top in members but far from it in traffic. Other popular social networks include Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, as well as international networks VK and Odnoklassniki.

As the entire world converges online, it's worth noting that horizontal competition is much more common than vertical. After the all-encompassing Facebook, all the top networks have a niche of sorts. Twitter specializes in concise posts, Instagram in still photos, Vine in short videos, YouTube in longer videos, and LinkedIn in cultivating professional networks. Second-rate sites like XING can be popular in certain regions, but even Hinrich has a LinkedIn profile. The idea of a global connection is too much to pass up. Long live Goliath.