social networks

There is a reason I rarely use Xing

Xing is the new name of what was openbc – it is a business networking site analogous to LinkedIn but with a more European focus.

It should be useful for me then. I should be using it all the time. I don’t. I use it extremely rarely.

Why? It has one of the most anal login reminder systems I have yet come across. I can never remember the random password assigned to my account so I have to go through a series of emails with the site to get a new random password. Why does it take more than one email to do this? And why not include info in the emails on how to change your password on the site?

Come on guys, this is not rocket science. Other sites have solved this issue.

Make your login procedures easier and people might start using you more.

As it is, I’m off back to LinkedIn.

12 thoughts on “There is a reason I rarely use Xing”

  1. I would like to explain some points:

    1. You should choose an own password you can better remember. You can easily do this here: https://www.xing.com/app/user?op=profile1
    You should of course use a safe password to protect your data so we show you how good your password is when your enter it.

    2. When you forgot your password you want to retrieve it again, but you can not identify yourself – so the function you use to retrieve your password can be used by anyone next to you.

    3. If anyone can reset your password with a random password, people can be annoyed by others if they just try random user names or email addresses and order their passwords to be resetted. Therefore we send a first mail to you which contains the link for resetting your password which nobody else can see.

    4. After you have resetted your password and logged in again, you get a reminder on the website which brings you directly to the page where you can change your password again to something you can better remember (see above). You’re right, we could also include this link direclty in the mail.

  4. @Nicole – thanks.

    I did manage to figure that out myself but I shouldn’t have to. How many others less technical than you or I will go to the trouble to figure it out?

    The instructions for changing your password should be written in every email about password reminders.

    Further, password reminder procedures should be possible to do in a single email (almost every other site I have used manages to do it in one email and I am subscribed to many sites, as I imagine are you).

  5. I have not changed the password that way, but if it as said, then your first step should be to change it to something familiar which you will remember.

    I disagree with having a direct link in there if you do not pass the “yes, have that redone” first – most services I know do exactly that: either force me on one side to at once change the password (less attractive to me) or make me realize I should change it.

    Is there room for improvement on xing? Hell yes, tons.
    Would I switch over to linkedin as my main network tool?

    Nope. Those downloaded contact information on my PDA from all my contacts are not available in Linkedin. 🙂

  6. your first step should be to change it to something familiar which you will remember

    Hey Nicole – I have done that. Again. But I am subscribed to literally hundreds of sites. I will not use the same password on them for obvious security reasons hence I use the password reminder link on sites often.

    If I type in my email address, why not email me a link to a page where I can change my password directly? Then it is all done in one simple transaction. The more steps you have, the more likely you are to lose people.

    As for synching contact info between Xing and your PDA, I don’t have a PDA so that functionality is irrelevant to me. I keep my contact info on my laptop. This is synched with Plaxo online automatically and with my mobile using iSync. Anymore than that is overkill.

    Having said that, there is a contact export function in LinkedIn which allows export to csv and vcf. I don’t see similar group export functionality in Xing. And you can upload contacts to LinkedIn in the same way as Xing (webmail contacts or text file).

  7. In any case, why not skip all the proprietary password silliness and use a federated ID system like OpenID?

    Or give people a choice to either login using OpenID or the broken Xing login system.

  8. Ignoring the password issue, have you experimented with ecademy? it’s a bit old school in comparision to linkedin but certainly has a thriving community

  9. Tom,
    without sounding mean, I think that your post was a bit moronic. If you can’t remember you password is just your fault, not xing’s fault.

    Write it down on the fridge. Moron.

  10. David,

    thanks for stopping by and commenting.

    The difficulty with your writing it on the fridge suggestion is that I am subscribed to, literally, hundreds of sites. If I were to write all their passwords on the fridge, I’d need a bigger fridge!

    As it is, any site which makes it difficult for me to reset my password or has awkward password reset procedures, is quickly dropped.

  11. Dear Tom,

    You are absolutely right. Thank you for opening our eyes.

    As a consequence, we at XING have just changed the password recovery process effective as of today. It is now straightforward and simple. Check it out!

    I would like to mention that XING always tries to satisfy its members. Keeping the right priorities in a competitive environment and giving small and large projects always the adequate attention is really a major discipline. Staying close to our members helps us a lot in this respect.

    Hope to hear from you either through this blog or in private.

    Thanks again.

    Felix

  12. Dear all,

    Xing/OpenBC has a outlook plugin – which I never got to work on my pc. The support was not able to help. So the contacts in Xing are kind of locked in – and I am also getting the feeling that it is not a “social-platform” but some company that locks my data.
    Do they seriously think they will become the only adress book of anyone?!

    I liked XING for the service of staying connected with others. But neglecting the fact that data exchange in ALL directions is important to the offXINGline life can be a killer to the business model.

    Why would I update my information inside a platform, when I cannot syncronize with the adress book I carry around daily?!

    Hopefully XING will improve. Until then I will have strated to use LinkedIn.

    BRs, Max

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