Facebook app branches out

After a year of stagnant growth, BranchOut, the professional networking application on Facebook, has exploded.

The surge in popularity shows Facebook users want a LinkedIn-like professional social networking feature, according to Inside Facebook.

Inside Facebook's AppData tracking service recorded that BranchOut's monthly active users grew from 32 000 to 817 000 last week. The number appears to be growing and according to the BranchOut Facebook page, the app currently has over 1 500 000 monthly active users.

The sudden growth has been attributed to a few simple changes to the app that now includes local job listings, as well as suggested connections.

Launched in August 2010, as a basic application that showed users where their friends worked, the company behind the app has since tested out a number of different features to encourage the use of the service for serious job-seeking.

In May, BranchOut added a “Jobs Tab” feature, which publishes openings to a company's Facebook page and allows Facebook users to apply for and share the job listing, while also seeing any inside connections they may have at the company.

“Many employers have been eager to experience the power of social recruiting on Facebook,” says founder and CEO of BranchOut Rick Marini, on the BranchOut blog.

According to reports, BranchOut is also planning a release of a premium enterprise recruiting search tool for the beginning of August.

BranchOut's growth has led to increasing comparisons with established professional networking site, LinkedIn.

While LinkedIn has long been the preferred choice for recruiters and job-seekers, the inherently social approach offered by BranchOut is said to pose a potential threat to LinkedIn's dominance.

LinkedIn is estimated to have 100 million users, but a significantly lower number of active users. Facebook, however, is estimated to have 500 million active users - a figure which is expected to continue to rise in the coming years.

LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and quickly gained popularity among professionals. Recently, LinkedIn has also been bolstering its social elements, including integration with Twitter, but is for the most part, still fairly static.

Some analysts argue that a comparison between LinkedIn and BranchOut is the equivalent of comparing apples to oranges, since many users want to draw a line between their personal and professional lives. A professional networking platform embedded in a site where people share personal photos and information and comment on friends' walls, blurs that line.

BranchOut allows users to simply import information directly from LinkedIn, removing the need to have to create an entirely new professional profile.

User reviews posted on Facebook fluctuate between five- and one-star ratings. One user review says: “Understand paranoia regarding Facebook privacy nowadays, but it seems to me that there's sufficient control over the BranchOut privacy. Good idea though, to turn one's Facebook network into a jobs-networking network. Could very well give LinkedIn a run for their money if managed, executed and done well.”

A less impressed user posted: “Best way to get a job is applying for it. If you are good you get it, if not, you don't. Sad to see people trying to profit from unemployed people that are looking for jobs.”

The BranchOut creators maintain that most people actually find new jobs through direct networking with friends. As such, they argue that to keep professional and personal contacts separate eliminates a highly valuable resource when searching for a job.

BranchOut also sees the upcoming generations as key growth potential for the service, since digital natives who use Facebook as an integral part of their everyday lives are likely to see no problem in incorporating business with leisure on a single platform.

A recent survey by the Kelly Group found that almost a quarter of respondents were using social networking services to search for new jobs; only 1%, however, successfully secured a job through such channels. The majority of placements (29%) were still secured through word-of-mouth referrals.

“It's clear that social networking is changing the way that people seek out work and engage in conversations about work opportunities,” says sales and marketing director for Kelly Group, Tracey Czakan.

“Like any new technology, people are learning that there are positives and negatives, and they need to be careful that they are tapping into the best elements of the Internet when their careers are involved.”