Comments on: BranchOut’s Trip to the Stars and Back to Earth

By: The travel startup fallout is here. Will anyone survive? | PandoDaily

The travel startup fallout is here. Will anyone survive? | PandoDaily — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:26:40 +0000

[...] and its peers have not copied is its spammy user acquisition strategy. Similar to much-criticized BranchOut, the company uses blasts to users’ Facebook Walls and invitations to acquire users. When [...]

By: The rise and fall of BranchOut | HRevolution

The rise and fall of BranchOut | HRevolution — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:03:55 +0000

[...] rss | trackback [...]

By: Why Facebook Should Rethink it’s Planned Job Board | jobtrakr

Why Facebook Should Rethink it’s Planned Job Board | jobtrakr — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:59:55 +0000

[...] taken out to the wood shed and blasted over their tactics. One blogger amounted BranchOut to “nothing more than a Ponzi scheme”. [...]

By: Social Recruitment & Latino Talent |

Social Recruitment & Latino Talent | — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:07:09 +0000

[...] the role social media will play in finding and developing talent. Some new services are budding – others not so much. Bullhorn Reach summarizes the views of several thought leaders here. Given the increasing number [...]

By: BranchOut Keeps Falling Down, Down - ERE.net

BranchOut Keeps Falling Down, Down - ERE.net — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 14:44:38 +0000

[...] has been nearly three weeks since I wrote about BranchOut’s meteoric rise and subsequent fall here on ERE. But because of the speed at which this LinkedIn clone continues to disintegrate, an [...]

By: Quora

Quora — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:49:36 +0000

Is BranchOut pivoting?…

After raising $50M from VCs, I heard that a huge portion of their workforce quit / were fired and the site’s traffic has been in freefall. There’s been a lot of negative press recently on them (see below) as well. But what’s the real story? Is Branc…

By: How You CAN'T Use Facebook to Find a Job

How You CAN'T Use Facebook to Find a Job — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:36:36 +0000

[...] figures were there to attract more investors or users we don’t know. Some call BranchOut a giant Ponzi scheme, with user-friendly [...]

By: BranchOut’s Trip to the Stars and Back to Earth | Job Board News

BranchOut’s Trip to the Stars and Back to Earth | Job Board News — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:33:44 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Quora

Quora — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:10:29 +0000

Why has Branchout’s traffic fallen by almost 50% in last few weeks?…

Alison Hillman no longer works for BranchOut (the site is downsizing because of a still continuing decrease in traffic). A more realistic answer can be found here: http://www.ere.net/2012/06/05/branchouts-trip-to-the-stars-and-back-to-earth/…

By: Jonathan Duarte

Jonathan Duarte — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:17:34 +0000

Marc,
Great post!

Sounds like Jobster Part II, except this time it wasn’t the HR and Recruiting community that got ripped off, it was the investor community buying another story about “How we are going to FIX recruiting” with their new widget.

Here’s a real simple rule for investing in Recruiting Technology… If their is no impact on actual hires… don’t buy it.
How many hires has BranchOut provided? Anyone? Anyone? No one?

I still think the same way about LinkedIn… 580 P/E ratio? With a company valuation equal to over 25% of the entire Global Recruiting Valuation? Yet, it is only a secondary means of hiring (meaning very few direct hires come from the site). I’ll wait.

Don’t get me wrong, LinkedIn is great, but the company isn’t responsible for 25% of Global Recruiting and therefore won’t be valued at that price for long.

By: Why the BranchOut Decline Isn’t Surpising | Product Talk

Why the BranchOut Decline Isn’t Surpising | Product Talk — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:48:07 +0000

[...] this week, ERE wrote this article about the rapid decline of BranchOut over the past 30 days. Peaking at 13.9 million monthly active [...]

By: BranchOut collapsing? This guy says so … | AIMGroup.com

BranchOut collapsing? This guy says so … | AIMGroup.com — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:53:02 +0000

[...] writes on ERE.net, a recruiter networking site, that BranchOut’s numbers have fallen off a [...]

By: BranchOut – The Rise and Fall and… | The ecom4 blog

BranchOut – The Rise and Fall and… | The ecom4 blog — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:00:49 +0000

[...] For a few weeks Marc has been writing about the phenomenon that was BranchOut and we have covered the story in both RecruitmentMediaNews and the RecruitmentBuzz. So this week, we asked Marc to be our guest blogger. He has written a follow up article on BranchOut and very kindly shared this with us at ECOM4 and my friends in the US, ERE.net [...]

By: Wat zou dit betekenen? | Over RecruitmentMatters | Recruitment Matters - Alles over online recruitment

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:33:31 +0000

[...] Wong heeft mijn LinkedIn profiel bekeken na publicatie van mijn artikel over BranchOut op ERE. Als goede complotdenker zou ik hieruit af kunnen leiden dat BranchOut een schot voor de boeg doet, [...]

By: Jay Silver

Jay Silver — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:13:04 +0000

Looks like Rick Marini has been spending too much time riding motorcycles.

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/23/branchout-ceo-rick-marinis-death-defying-ride/

By: Maureen Sharib

Maureen Sharib — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:25:50 +0000

I feel sorry for those investors.
I feel sorry for any investor “investing” today in “social media.”

“Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.”

By: Heeft Identified soms goed naar BranchOut gekeken? | Recruitment nieuws | Recruitment Matters - Alles over online recruitment

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 06:12:13 +0000

[...] De site heeft een zeer snelle groei laten zien, maar is ondertussen alweeer gehalveerd. Het is nog niet zo erg als BranchOut, maar ook Identified lijkt te hebben gepiekt. Er is helemaal geen groei! Het grote verschil met [...]

By: Quora

Quora — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:23:36 +0000

What has caused Branchout’s usage (WAUs) to fall by almost 50% in the last 2 weeks?…

Another theory here http://www.ere.net/2012/06/05/branchouts-trip-to-the-stars-and-back-to-earth/ “How is it possible that at one moment a site can grow so fast only to suddenly reverse course and plummet nearly as fast? There is a word for such an ev…