That brings me to the application that I am reviewing, which is BranchOut.
From what I heard yesterday, BranchOut is a Facebook application that makes use of the reach of Facebook (apparently 850 million people) in order to connect jobs to people. Companies can make use of the strong network on Facebook, while job seekers can make use of their own (and their friends') connections to find jobs. This makes it sort of like LinkedIn. However, BranchOut profits a lot from the strong user base in Facebook, as every user on Facebook is very well-connected with a lot of other users. For Facebook, most people end up friend-ing everyone that they know (or even people that they might not know), but LinkedIn is more "professional", so the connections are not as many as Facebook. In a way, if BranchOut manages to successfully use Facebook's network, it can become even more popular (and hence, more useful) than LinkedIn. Armed with Facebook JS SDK (just keep sharing, appearing on people's ticker etc.), as well as the sheer number of hours people spend on Facebook, I believe that it is possible that BranchOut can become more popular than LinkedIn.
However, as was mentioned, Branchout mixes the professional and personal side of life, which is a bad point if you do really silly stuff with your friends. In addition, some of your profile information can be queried on BranchOut, so any information that you unknowingly leave behind can be pretty lethal to your own employment. This may cause the application to lose out on a large set of users who manage to recognise this fact. However, in a way, it could be useful also. Companies do not necessary look for people based on their skills' only; they also look out for people with certain personality traits, and if you manage to demonstrate those traits somehow in your profile, it could actually benefit you. To be honest, it's a double-edged sword, but in this case, I personally feel that it would probably harm you more than do good for you.
The third important point of the presentation is that Branchout needs to grow its user-base first. BranchOut was developed using funding, so it's important that it is able to sustain itself. BranchOut earns money through premium subscriptions, services for job recruiters and job postings. In order to break off from their funding and sustain themselves, they definitely need to branch out (pardon the pun) even more to people and companies. I'm not sure how sustainable the growth of BranchOut is, but if it is not able to a) branch out and b) keep the existing users active within BranchOut, I don't think the application would survive. Moreover, it seems like BranchOut is intended for users of all collars, but it is highly doubtful that professionals will use BranchOut rather than LinkedIn. The rest of the users (who are not professionals) don't seem to be the type that will pay for such an application also. Hence, I feel that BranchOut's current revenue model may not work out.
I'm always interested about potential competitors, and while researching about BranchOut, I found this Facebook application called Talent.me, and it seems to be similar to BranchOut, but it has the ability to post your resume, which BranchOut lacks. I think it would be interesting to see how BranchOut and Talent.me work out in the end.
In addition, BranchOut also serves to connect people to internships, which is more vital to me at this moment, since I won't be graduating yet. As such, I wonder if it might be better if BranchOut tries to serve this niche market better, especially since Facebook has a large user base of university students (since it did start out with university students.)
To conclude, I feel that BranchOut is an interesting idea and it makes great use of Facebook's extensive network. Unfortunately, without the use of proper control over what is exposed on BranchOut (BranchOut doesn't allow for custom resumes), it seems that BranchOut may lose the edge over LinkedIn. It's a good idea, but I feel that the implementation doesn't seem to be well-thought-out.
Yes i do agree with you that mixing social network with professional work is a double edged sword. Like it was discussed on monday, Branchout served more like a in between word of mouth and linkedin. Currently there are a lot of jobs in Singapore that are being passed around via word of mouth, like a security job stint for Tangs, home tuition for children, even job vacancies in Macdonalds are hired through friends' recommendations. thus i do see potential in branchout, acting as the formalized version of this old tradition - Benjamin Xue
ReplyDeleteTrue, I guess it depends on how they market themselves? So far it doesn't seem to be well-marketed so I have no idea what kind of jobs can be found there etc.
DeleteAnd haha, here's another example of jobs being found passed by "word of mouth". Do you have a final project grouping yet?
I still remember a very experienced hr manager warned all the candidates to keep their fb profile away from their interviewers as nobody knows what those 'real reflection' of themselves would do to their job applications. They may fail because of an inappropriate post. However, think about it positively, every employer wants to know more real things about the applicants. In this sense, branch out has a strong potential to gain companies' interest to post job openings, which in turn attracts more job seekers. To me branchout has a very bright future, but their current execution is poor, which was presented on Monday
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I feel that employers might want to actively look out for people on Facebook just so that they can find out how the person is like and whether he/she is being honest. Seeing that we had professional Facebook stalkers in CS3216 stalking our Facebook page, do you think current companies would stalk their potential employees' Facebook pages as well?
DeletePerhaps BranchOut would be deemed as useful for the companies, and if the demand for employees is there, I'm sure the job seekers would end up signing up too, since it's mainly the companies that are actually controlling the job market.
Thank you for doing so much research on BranchOut, which we who presented it also does not know quite clearly. Just one point of my own opinion about the ugly point of BranchOut. You know that there is a standalone website for BranchOut. However, each time when will click any button or link after we log in, it will redirect to the Facebook Iframe app. Then what is the existence value of the standalone one? Just for advertising? This is actually the point that I dislike most for BranchOut.
ReplyDeleteOhh, I didn't know that. I guess they wanted users to see a site when we type in "BranchOut" on Google? But I guess its uses are very limited to your friends, so that's why they want to redirect it to the iframe application.
DeleteHmm, maybe they should have done a standalone application instead? What do you think?
In my opinion,It is easy for user to know all his/her friends working history and lists of jobs company offered through this kind of apps. But for branchOut since it is an interface of Totaljobs by huilding social network on it, it should build entire key function of Totaljobs. Compared to Totaljobs it lacks a function for find the correct person who match their requirement most. So why not user direct use Totaljobs which has more function than branchOut. However to let more people use this app, some evidences of reliability of information and keep users privacy safe must be added.
ReplyDeleteI honestly feel that the major failing of BranchOut is that it has its focus wrong. It's posing itself as a very professional network for jobseekers to find proper jobs yet at the same time it's tapping onto the Facebook network which for most parts is strictly casual. It would be difficult for any HR personal to determine how a person would behave professionally based on their Facebook data. Like what Benjamin mentioned above, perhaps BranchOut should target more casual, ad hoc jobs as those are the types of jobs that would benefit from tapping onto a wider network as opposed to a more specific network like LinkedIn
ReplyDeleteMmm, I thought about it, so I pointed out in my post that maybe BranchOut should focus on a niche area, and internships seemed a viable choice. By after reading your comment, I realised that BranchOut may be useful for part-timers too, or temporary workers, especially during busy periods for certain industries (mooncake!) So perhaps the team's suggestion of having custom resume might not have been such a good suggestion, seeing that these jobs don't require a resume. Instead, it requires the job-seekers to have a specific skill-set.
DeleteAgree with Jesmond Chia, BranchOut has failed to be a professional network for headhunters and jobseekers. They shouldn't integrate with Facebook which is not a professional social network like LinkedIn. Facebook Users would like to relax, have fun in when using Facebook. They may not provide correct and formal information. Therefore, the information is unreliable.
ReplyDelete