Now there are 3 choices for professional social networking.

Like most of us in recruiting, I've become accustomed to the basic trifecta of social  media: LinkedIn for professional networking, Facebook for friends and family, and Twitter for news, immediacy, and broadening my network.

So I'll admit that when BranchOut, a Facebook application designed for professional networking, launched a few months ago, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention.  (I wasn't alone, either - it wasn't until a relaunch earlier this month that BranchOut started to pick up a lot of new users.)

Then this week, Monster launched BeKnown, its own Facebook application for professional social networking.

Both apps made the news earlier this week when TechCrunch reported that LinkedIn had cut off their API access, meaning that users couldn't import information and contacts directly from LinkedIn.  Whether or not this was a smart move by LinkedIn - who have a history of denying access to applications that use LinkedIn-based data to make money in other ways - remains to be seen.  What's more interesting for recruiters right now is:  What do these apps mean for the current recruiting-for-social-media trifecta?

How do the applications work for users?

Well...a lot like what you'd expect if you combined Facebook with LinkedIn, actually:  You create a profile page which looks a lot like your Facebook page (you create a work-related profile, invite friends to connect with you as they would on Facebook, and then you can search for and apply for jobs, make and receive 'endorsements', etc.).

Both allow you to import contacts from other sources; both work much the same as other Facebook applications, in terms of posting to your wall, constant demands to invite friends, etc.  

In other words, it's pretty easy to get started on both of them.

What users are doing

Well, BranchOut already has more than 2 million monthly active users, most of whom seem to have come along in the past couple of weeks after the application was relaunched to be "less spammy", according to CEO Rick Marini:

(Image via ERE.net.)

BeKnown, on the other hand, has just over 100,000 monthly active users - though it's only been around for a week and, as I write this, has gained almost 10k users in the past 24 hours alone.

LinkedIn, by contrast, has somewhere north of 100 million registered users, though how many of these are considered 'active' is less clear.

What recruiters need to know

Primarily, that neither BranchOut nor BeKnown lets you search for candidates which meet a set of criteria, so its use as a sourcing tool is, at the moment, limited.

Yes, both applications let you post jobs (both for free, though if you want to post jobs that can be seen by the entire BranchOut network, you'll have to pay $49), but candidates have to install the apps and then go searching for jobs in order to see them.  

There are a couple of other drawbacks to consider as well:

• The only way these applications work is by inviting friends and contacts, which means not only inviting all your Facebook friends, but manually searching for and inviting all your LinkedIn contacts with whom you aren't already Facebook friends.  Which may take a while, especially if you're one of those people with 1000+ LinkedIn contacts


• Even passionate users of Facebook are already fed up with the constant stream of requests from applications, games, groups and fan pages.  How receptive are they going to be when you invite them to yet another application - especially one which takes a lot of time to set up?


• Facebook has had a whole lot of privacy-related problems in the past couple of years.  Even if you, as a recruiter, are comfortable mixing your personal and professional data within Facebook (both BeKnown and BranchOut say there is a 'Chinese Wall' between their application data and general Facebook data, but that wall has been breached by Facebook before), how likely is it that your professional contacts (i.e. candidates and referral sources) are going to feel equally comfortable?

Critical mass and demographics

Remember when everyone said that Twitter was 'dumb', 'only for geeks', and 'couldn't possibly be more than a fad'?  

Right:  If social media has taught us anything in the past few years, it's that when it comes to new apps,  a few months can make all the difference, whether it's in terms of new features, usability, or, most importantly, critical mass.

Facebook has one key advantage over LinkedIn:  750 million active monthly users, vs. LinkedIn's 100 million registered users (it's not clear what percentage of LinkedIn's registered users are active).  The fact that BranchOut has been able to attract more than 2 million users - 1.5 million of them in the past couple of weeks alone - suggests that volume alone will allow them to reach critical (job-seeker) mass fairly quickly. 

Critical mass with job-seekers will no doubt lead to additional features for recruiters - such as candidate database searching.

It's also interesting to note that Facebook's demographics are almost identical to those of Monster (owners of BeKnown), while both are significantly different from those of LinkedIn.  It's possible that future growth of BeKnown and BranchOut could look less like LinkedIn and more like a completely different animal, positioned for a different market, than LinkedIn.

Bottom line for recruiters?

You don't have to be in a hurry to join BranchOut and BeKnown at the moment - they simply don't yet offer enough features or users to make them a valuable addition to your current social media or job posting efforts.  And LinkedIn isn't likely to give up the ghost any time soon.  But you should probably keep an eye on both of them, especially if your target candidate demographic tends to skew a little younger.