Assignment 2 goes so fast but we had a nice experience on Monday`s lecture. All nine groups shared bright ideas and did excellent and interesting presentation. My assigned project to review is BranchOut.
BranchOut is a Facebook application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees. Some points during presentation impressed me a lot.
First is the idea of this app. Actually I think it is a common idea when developing a Facebook app or on other social network apps. We add the power of social network on existing applications. Like BranchOut, the main function about jobs finding is just an interface of Totaljobs.com. Users can do simple search and click apply to redirect to Totaljobs website. That website is a good functional job matching platform. BranchOut moves that function on a social network platform to allow user share their working information with their friends. This fully use the feature of social network: large user base. User can know more about the companies` requirement without applying the interview. This will bring social communication to simple job finding.
Next, one good feature about this app is that you can know your friends` working history, and people can endorse others through this app. The main purpose of building stuffs should be benefits the users. I
think this is a good feature which can help some users get useful information about their desired jobs.
Also this is the power of social network. On the other hand, companies also can get benefits from this app. Based on users CV or profile, they can get all people who match their requirement. It is much easier to find people on social network platform.
Then commercial
potential is quite weak for the app, since various business models for social
apps do not apply. It does
not have in-app
purchases. Also lack
of distinguishing features is causing a loss of users. Since the main function is from other source, users actually can choose that source to get their purpose. I go through Totaljobs and find there are more feature than BranchOut. More professional people may use that one. Social network has good advantage of large user base but it also needs lots of users. So if not much people use BranchOut, it will keep losing users. So BranchOut needs to retain its user base. Some advices are getting more detailed jobs and detailed user information. Also it needs someway to ensure the reliability of information and user`s` privacy.
In my opinion, this kind of app is quite popular since it is hard to find a good job now. It is easy for user to know all his/her friends working history and lists of jobs company offered through this kind of apps. 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.
Anyway, we can learn this kind of idea when we are building stuff. Since people are main concern we can add social network in our applications to get more user base and communication between users. Of course, this is not enough for an app to be successful. It must support entire functions to ensure good user experience and reasonable commercial benefit.
