Lately, I have worked a lot with Xing.  So far, I think it is a great social network.  Since it is more of a business network than just to socialize, it is difficult to have other members see your personal data (I am talking here about email address, telephone number and the likes – nothing else).  I know, a lot of people do not want their personal data shared.  But if you are in the social networks, don’t you want your name to be out there and people to contact you?  I think that should be a good reason to let everybody see your data.  If they would go to your website, would they find the same data there?  Well, then it really doesn’t matter if people can find that same data also in a social network.  If you are this far withme, I have good and bad news for you. The bad ones first: Xing does not allow to make the contact data visible to everybody besides the things you can change in your private data box. Now, the good news: there are several ways around it.

1) Post your information in your “about me” page. (easiest way)
2) You can give each single member of Xing (contact of you or not does not matter) access to your contact data. When you go to the profile of the Xing member you want to give access to your contact data, just click on the right upper side under settings on “edit shared personal info.” There you can manage which personal info you want this member to see from you. To make this easier for all of your contacts that you have already, just go to your address book and click on ” show shared personal info” in the upper right corner. Now, you can change for each contact which data you want them to see. Additionally, there is a form like this everytime you write a message. So, whenever you write a message, do not forget to add which contact data that person can see. Everytime you open a profile you have not been to before, just share your contact info with them. That way, when they contact you, they can see all of it already.

I sure sounds like a bit of work to work around it, but if you really want people to see your personal data, this is the way.