The lure of hundreds of millions of potential customers is still apparently not enough incentive for job sites to jump on board the MySpace application train. To date, there are only three job sites with apps on the popular social networking site. And only one - Simply Hired - is a known entity.
So what’s up?
No doubt many job boards who jumped onto Facebook when they launched their application solution feel burnt by the experience. Paul Forster of Indeed stated at a conference last fall that apps for jobs were largely a failure, with users opting for more entertaining options like sheep throwing.
However, for some, it may simply be a matter of time before a presence on MySpace is realized. CareerBuilder’s VP of Consumer Marketing, Richard Castellini said, “As with any changing technology, CareerBuilder carefully analyzes it for ways in which we could incorporate into our mix of reaching job seekers. At this point in time, MySpace Apps haven’t met some of our hurdles for launching, but we are looking into it and will eventually launch one.”
(I imagine dedicating programmer time on their iPhone app was more important anyway.)
Another theme laid out by people we spoke with was that MySpace’s platform was far more complicated than Facebook’s. Steven Rothberg, CEO of College Recruiter said, “We wanted to roll out a similar app to MySpace but their app development system was riddled with bugs for weeks so we hit the pause button and just re-started our efforts. So far, it seems that they’ve fixed their bugs so we anticipate rolling out the app within a couple of weeks.”
Rothberg’s site has had success in cleverly getting app users to provide SEO-friendly content to their Candidates Insight Blog, a strategy different from most who primarily serve job content. Said Rothberg, “We’ve received some good traction with our Career Blog application on Facebook, which encourages students and recent graduates to share their career goals and stories with their friends and then automatically posts then anonymously.”
Simply Hired, which powers MySpace’s job portal, was the first to go live with a job-related application. To date, they have 7,684 uploads. They went live on March 18.
Popularity: 36% [?]
July 25th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I think there’s a big issue relating to commercializing Facebook. It’s a destination site. I’m not convinced it can be a compelling source of quality traffic. Their ads system typically produces lesser results and lower quality compared with Google - I blogged about it at http://www.workrewired.com/blog/post/6
The reality is that a lot of people use social networking sites as simply that - it’s a means to keep up with friends and find out what’s going on.
If they’re looking for a job, they’ll head to a jobs site. If they’re looking for their friend’s photos or play a game of Scrabble they’ll head to Myspace or Facebook.
On Facebook today Scrabble has 10,000 active users, Careerbuilders app had 20.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Greig–Job Boards are just as much a “destination” site as social networks FB et al) What matters is whether the site is a temporary destination or not. Clearly professionals, [not professional job seekers] are more engaged in social networks. Most recruiters simply cant figure out how to make the connections other than in the traditional clock you over the head with spam approach..