When you want to touch base with your friends and family you use Facebook. When you are working on professional networking, you use a site like Linkedin. Right? Well, maybe not so much anymore.
There is a new social networking application that looks as though it may change the rules of the game. Again.
The new app is Branchout, and it is a Facebook application that combines your personal network with your professional network. Branchout is gaining ground and seems to be a rising star in the social media world. The founder of BranchOut, Rick Marini has raised over $6 million in startup money by securing investors who are Marini's friends, family and previous business associates. These investors include Accel Partners, Shawn Fanning (who is the former Napster founder), WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Google's Ben Ling, just to name a few. In Marini's case, he used blended his personal network with his professional network in order to finance the new business venture. It certainly sets the example for the power of networking. And, with so many investors standing behind this new application, it is certainly seems like it is destined to be a success.
How it works is that you install the Facebook application, and it connects you with the professional networks of your friends and your friend's friends. Basically, BranchOut is a Linkedin for your Facebook. It was built on the idea that the way that people get jobs is through their friends. And in many cases this is true.
So why would you want to use BranchOut? Well, one of the big selling points is that it is on Facebook. You can never underestimate the value of the recommendation of a friend. This is the premise that all social networking for jobs is built around, and this application seems to marry the personal network with the professional one in a way that is seamless. It allows users to search for people who are working in the same field and also allows you to see all of your friends that either work at specific companies or who know people who do. It extracts all of its information from Facebook profiles and has plans to get information from other sources as well. One of the neat things about this application, is that it allows you to send job recommendations to your friends.
BranchOut is up and running on Facebook, so you should take a look and give it a try. It might become the new way to build your personal brand and take your social network to the next level.
Are you looking for a new job in Real Estate? If so, head over to RealEstateJobSite.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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