Tuesday, April 21, 2009

InterNations Re-launched

Hi Everyone, Congratulations go out today to the guys (Philipp von Plato, Christian Leifeld and Malte Zeeck) over at InterNations, who have both:

  • grown their expat/global minds social networking site from zero to over 100,000 members in just over 18 months; and
  • recently graduated from a beta site to a new and improved second version of their site.
Philipp got in touch today and shared the following:

"Our members represent 180 different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. The average InterNations member is in his or her thirties, well-educated, career-oriented, dynamic and internationally-mobile. Their status as expats, trailing spouses, former expatriates or global minds with a huge interest in foreign affairs and transnational business also distinguishes them from the more sedentary executives and employees in other professional networks."

"InterNations Events are also run in more than 100 cities worldwide, by our InterNations Ambassadors – i.e. committed volunteers with a fondness of networking. The biggest of these get-togethers at chic venues attract 150-300 people per month. There may also be additional special interest events from a guided city tour in Bogotá over a beach party in Muscat to a skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps or an exclusive dive cruise in the Bahamas. "

InterNations is an invitation-only network, but if you would like an invitation, just click here and join in!

5 comments:

Suzer said...

I have to say, and please don't think I'm being overly critical, that I am not impressed with InterNations for one reason in particular. I have been asking them to create an Adelaide, Australia community for well over a year and they have kept giving the reason that it is hard to make the time for changes. Now, I see they have put the time and effort into a re-vamp of the site, and are still ignoring my new home. I was an Ambassador for their Auckland community for a while and feel that they have more of an agenda for themselves than for the global expat community, unlike other sites, such as Expat Women. It's a shame, as the Adelaide expat community misses out in this instance, and we will have to give our time to another global expat site, there being many these days.

Expat Women said...

Hi Suzer,

My apologies that I did not see your comment until now. I was ill last week and not on our blog much, sorry.

I've written to Philipp to ask if he can possibly help you.

Here's wishing for an Adelaide community for you very soon!

Best wishes, Andrea.

Philipp von Plato said...

Dear Suzer,

I remember very well our early days with you being one of our very first ambassadors and I can very well understand your disappointment and frustration. I am sorry for that!

However, I hope and kindly ask for your understanding that in a small organisation like ours some developments simply need time, even though we work very hard on it day by day. And please believe me - I also would like to speed up things oftentimes.. ;-).

We have a very long IT agenda with tons of potential enhancements, new features etc..., but just 2 full-time programmers. That means we have to prioritize carefully and also change our schedule from time to time when required (as in your case). We took the decision that it was more important for InterNations to first relaunch our website and make it more user-friendly and 99,9% bug-free in the existing communities, before opening up new ones. This is planned in a subsequent step. We have requests from over 50 cities to open up new communities which makes it a bigger IT project of approx. 1-2 weeks. I will let you know as soon as we start and I would be very happy to welcome you back on InterNations and maybe relieve your hard feelings.

Philipp

Suzer said...

No worries Andrea and thanks. I thought it would be odd for you to be ignoring my comment! Hope you are feeling better.

Phillip I do understand the difficulties of finding enough time in the day for all of your IT projects, as both my husband and I currently work in that field. I would think the existence of the communities would be a higher priority, but then, InterNations is not my baby, it's yours;)

Suzer said...

And as I have long suspected, InterNations is going to be charging membership fees now, per an email going out to current members this week in regards to the relaunch of the web site. There is still an option of a free membership but they are now introducing a new level of membership which requires a monthly fee of 5 Euros. So, at the end of the day, it was more important for InterNations to revamp the web site, so that they could charge, than create communities to serve all of its members. Expat communities should exist to serve their members, at their deepest level, not to further the agenda of their creators.

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