This article is an invitation to discuss how Xing may address the issues the community has concerning inactive members. Please read the introduction first, and then please do share your point of view in the comment field below.

BACKGROUND ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
If you are reading this, it is highly likely that you are a member of the network community Xing. And if you are a Xing member, it is equally likely that you are a member of one or several other networking communities such as LinkedIN, Naymz, Spock, Ecademy, Orkut, Konnects, Ryze, Pulse or similar business minded social networking sites. And heck – you might even have a profile on Tribe, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, Multiply, Bebo, Cyworld or even Hi5.

For most of us, I reckon, spreading our networking interests and establishing old and new connections across several social networking platforms, is largely due to friends and business acquaintances inviting us to do so. And since different people take preference in different community/networking platforms,
it is obvious that many of us might end up establishing and maintaining a profile on several platforms. However maintaining a profile on two or more platforms is a time consuming task. Obviously many people end up giving priority to one networking platform, ignoring the other platforms.  This in turn leaves the less prioritized platform with a large number of more or less incomplete profiles - profiles with only a few connections, owned and maintained by inactive community members.

And in that lies a tremendous challenge for Xing and most other networking communities.

SO WHAT IS XING’S PROBLEM?
A large percentage of the Xing community is inactive! And as you know, inactive members are highly unlikely to pay for a premium membership, nor will they contribute anything to benefit the community.

The huge amount of inactive Xing members came to my attention when – over the past 5-6 days – we have invited a large number of qualified members to the Marketingboss Group on Xing. I was quite surprised by it. It seems that especially outside of the German speaking countries, the ratio of inactive vs. somewhat active members is especially high.

Obviously most networking communities are suffering from this phenomenon. It seems only a few social networking communites such as Cyworld, which is believed to have 50% of the Korean population as members and 95% of their youth segment active, have been fortunate to avoid this problem.

WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST?
Let’s discuss what Xing can do to improve the conversion from a person’s simple registration to convert that person to become an active, contributing member of Xing.

Should Xing offer more features to become more attractive to first timers?

Could it help to improve the communication targeted at new members? Should Xing  plan and execute “win-back” or “re-activation” campaigns targeted at inactive or “dead “profiles? Does Xing need to re-invent their positioning? Is Xing stuck-in-the-middle unable to compete on a global level with business networks
such as Xing and Ryze or on the social-networking-with-friends-level against such fierce competitors as Facebook (said to be moving into the business space soon) and Friendster.

Please provide your comments, suggestions, ideas, thoughts in the comment field below. Thank you for your participation.

Recommended reading:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/category/social-networking/
(Jeremiah Owyang, Web strategies)