Jason Goldberg, the chief product officer of Xing, the European biz social network that Burda just bought a big stake in, is leaving the company with this deal, about 12 months after his social news startup Socialmedian was sold to the Germany-headquartered company. The Socialmedian sale price at that point was about $4 million in cash and stock, and a performance-based earn-out valued at between €500,000 and €2.5 million, payable over three years, which likely means Goldberg didn’t get much out of the earnout, understandable in a horrible economy like this. He tells me: “I am leaving amicably and as a shareholder,” which means some cash-out opportunities ahead. Goldberg will be moving back from Hamburg, Germany to New York City, where he was previously based. Prior to Socialmedian, he was the controversial co-founder and CEO of the well-funded jobs site Jobster.

Goldberg announced his leaving in a blog post on his new umbrella Betashop’s site. Despite the likely non-existent earnout, he seems to have enough money to be angel investing and advising startups. One of the companies he has invested in is twitter client Tweetdeck. But most of his time, he says, will be focused on his new stealth company Fabulis, which judging by the name of it, would likely be in the lifestyle/entertainment space.

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