I was somewhat intrigued by this item about professional/social networking sites Xing and LinkedIn.  I’ve written before that I think LinkedIn really sucks.  I also will freely make this comment any time I end up in a conversation about LinkedIn.  There has yet to be someone who challenges me in this assertion.  I will take that to mean that there is general agreement that LinkedIn sucks.  Maybe the frustrating thing is that LinkedIn is in theory a good idea.  But their implementation is all wrong.

The interesting thing is that Xing appears to be taking on the role of the hungry challenger.  They’re getting aggressive in order to grow their market share.  I don’t use Xing, and I will probably wait to sign up, but I think it’s important that LinkedIn has a credible challenger.  Somebody should figure out online professional networking and make it worthwhile.  For now LinkedIn appears to be badly trying to copy elements of Facebook and badly failing, the same way a “cool dad” might try to wear something from Abercrombie and think that he’s making it work.

Having said that, I sort of wonder if either Xing or LinkedIn will become really relevant.  I have a lot more confidence in Facebook to solve the professional networking thing.  In tech circles it’s already pretty commonplace to use Facebook for business networking.  I think Facebook needs to be tweaked a little in order to mix business/personal, but it can happen.

For Xing’s part, I don’t think they need to worry that they are behind for now.  If they get it right, they can probably grow their market share pretty quickly.  The web is pretty indifferent towards established market leaders (see Netscape, Microsoft, MySpace, etc.).

Related posts:

1. Is LinkedIn Relevant? I’ve posted before that LinkedIn is great in concept, but...
2. On the Next Business Social Platform I think there’s a misconception among people who don’t use...
3. LinkedIn Still Awful I really don’t use LinkedIn regularly, or really at all. ...