Socialmedian acquired by Xing!

OK, this was unexpected news! On the socialmedian blog Jason Goldberg CEO wrote:

This is great news for socialmedian’s members as XING is committed to growing and developing socialmedian both as a standalone service as well launching integrated socialmedian services on XING, one of the leading online business networks in the world.

The entire socialmedian team will be joining XING as part of the acquisition.  I will be relocating to Hamburg, where I will lead up a major new initiative for XING, the XING Application Platform.  In this new role, in addition to strengthening and enhancing the socialmedian service, I will also be responsible for managing global partnerships for application developers and content providers to connect with the XING network.

This is an awesome development for socialmedian.  

socialmedian delivers the news, filtered by your network.  XING is one of the leading global online networks and is rapidly growing around the world with nearly 7 million members, up from 4.8 million in 2007.  Together, socialmedian & XING will connect people with the people, information, and resources they need to get their jobs done, follow their interests, and pursue their passions. 

For people who don’t know, Xing is a European centric Business Networking site (was earlier OpenBC.com) and while I joined OpenBC long ago, never became a convert, although I know some friends who preferred OpenBC and now Xing over Linkedin, which I thought was doing a Facebook 🙂

So Goldberg’s new role as Xing App Platform seems like Xing wants to emulate LI’s facebookization too 😉

The big question is, is Xing too late?

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