BranchOut Tries to Gamify Career Networking on Facebook

I recently pegged LinkedIn as a social media company to watch in 2011, but a (relatively) new kid in town, BranchOut, is using social gaming tactics to take on the career-networking giant.

BranchOuts app launched last summer, but CEO and founder Rick Marini told me that over the next week or so, the company plans to roll out game-like quizzes and, later, badges and leaderboards geared towards helping users further their careers. How? The services Connections feature enables users to connect to other Facebook users outside their network of friends.

BranchOut targets three constituencies: career networkers, recruiters and sales professionals looking for leads. It has about 150,000 users and is just starting to talk to recruiters and HR professionals. It has 3 million jobs listings powered by Indeed.com and 15,000 internships. Today, anyone can place a job listing for free, though BranchOut will eventually charge for that, as well as for advanced search features for recruiting.

BranchOutsoaks in and displays two degrees of Facebook friends (i.e., friends and their friends) and any company information theyve posted. Users can import their public LinkedIn profile information via LinkedIns API to create a resume. They can sort connections by friend or by company and make endorsements. (An internship contest is based on collecting endorsements.)

Marini figures he can leverage Facebooks nearly 600 million users with their existing friends networks to gain ground against LinkedIns 85 million users. He believes that a college or just-graduated audience will choose to add a professional filter to their Facebook network, rather than build a new one from scratch at LinkedIn.

BranchOut is facing a more crowded market. In the fall, LinkedIn beta-launched Career Explorer, a service that includes gaming elements for college students, and there are plenty of other social media competitors, including at least 10other Facebook jobs apps. More importantly, while recent grads are certainly seeking professional connections, they dont necessarily have any meaningful ones yet. BranchOut will have to attract some experienced professionals with valuable business contacts, not just Facebook super connectors.

Marini has learned much from his previous startup, Tickle, which was acquired and then shut down by Monster.com. To read some of BranchOuts most promising strategies, read my column at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Image source: flickr user 24oranges.nl

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