I have a profile in two different business oriented social networking services: LinkedIn and XING.
I have far more connections in LinkedIn than in XING.
My connections in LinkedIn are mainly from English speaking countries (US, UK, IE, IN, AU) and from Scandinavia (DK, NO, SE) where I live and where English is widely spoken not at least by people in white-collar.
The connections I have with people in XING are almost only with people from Germany.
This picture matches very well how these two tools are positioned.
The US based LinkedIn is strong in “English speaking” countries with most profiles per capita in:
- Denmark, Netherlands and USA followed by
- Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and Australia
(I have some figures from last year when LinkedIn passed 50 million profiles).
XING is strong in Germany, where XING was founded, and through acquisitions also in Spain and Turkey.
Now, it’s not that you can’t operate LinkedIn in German and Spanish; you can. Also you can operate XING in English.
It’s about meeting your connections where they are.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
“It’s about meeting your connections where they are.” > Fully agree!
If one day you make business with the French Connection, don’t forget to create your viadeo.com account – the most widely used business network there, being a non English nor German speaking country (not a matter of unwillingness, but of education system!).
Disconnected Duplicated siloed professional profiles, mmm…
Thanks for commenting Olivier.
Yep, in doing social networking you certainly learn some of the “rightful” reasons for creating duplicate identities 🙂