Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

I am starting to figure out that the only social network I am really using often is Xing. This is for one simple reasons: It is becoming my address book. This is really what Xing should be focussing on in my mind. Marketplace and all is nice, but there is an amazing value to be created from simply making sure that it becomes my address book. Once Xing becomes my address book there is actually no synchronization problem anymore. My data store is Xing. I don’t want to Sync. I want Xing to be my address book. If there is somebody not in Xing I want to be able to add that person to my Pool of contacts and if it through social apis they will be able to get more information about them from the web. I want full access on the go, an app for the iPhone, S60 phones, Mac Addressbook Plugin, a great mobile html version, … . We are moving to an always on world and I one thing that is still not online for me is my address book. eMails are online through GMail but the address book is only synchronized between several devices.

So there you go, needed to get that off my chest. Please enhance Xing to be my address book. Always there, with everybody I have in my rolodex, in Xing or not.

Enough of the rambling. These 2 minutes writing helped get that of my chest

You have to have Love for Geeks, partly because they love Apple and hence love the iPhone. Bill Liao from Xing is one of those people and now he posted about having his iPhone here in Europe. Having made some money down the line, surely helps to cover the cost of constant roaming, but hey, I still have to thank him.

For some time, one of the main features I wanted from Xing was an export of all my contacts as a vCard to import into the Apple Address Book. Now Bill got his iPhone and wanted his contacts on there, hence, diverted a few development resources and now in your Address list on Xing you have a small little button that says “mobile export (iPhone) …”. What that thing does is export a vCard of all your contacts, which again, easily imports to my address book. 312 Contacts imported, 149 duplicates will be updates. Kick ass! Thanks Bill for getting an iPhone