Profiting from Social Networking

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It's a common mistake, says Facebook Senior Platform Manager Dave Morin. According to him, too many companies still see applications as marketing rather than as new business. They bring users to an application either to advertise to them or to build a connection they hope will subsequently send users off Facebook and to their main business—a company Web site, say, or its online store. Instead, companies should be trying to make the application into a self-sustaining business that generates revenue through the service it provides on Facebook. "The applications that are the most successful are the ones that integrate seamlessly into Facebook," Morin says, a model that conveniently supports Facebook's own business ambitions.

A Business-to-Business Model

At the same time, most users expect Facebook to be entertaining and, well, free, so getting them to pay for an application directly is unlikely. Companies such as the career networking site Jobster.com are trying to get other businesses to pay for access to Facebook users.

On Jobster's Facebook application, called Jobster Career Networking, users post résumés and declare career goals. Jobster then feeds those résumés to companies such as Nike (NKE), GE (GE), and Merrill Lynch (MER), which pay a $100 monthly premium fee to access résumés from Facebook. That's in addition to the $300 they pay for résumés from the main Jobster.com database. It's a premium they're prepared to pay to access young workers with perhaps nontraditional backgrounds. "We aren't after the companies that want a classic job board," says Jobster's Vice-President for Corporate Communications Christian Anderson. In its first month on Facebook, Jobster Career Networking moved 300 companies from regular to premium membership and brought in 50 new partners, generating several hundred thousand dollars in revenue, according to Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg.

Given that Facebook is a social network whose main function is entertainment, there's a danger that job hunting may not be an activity users wish to load onto their profile, when they can do so just as well on Jobster.com or any other job search site. In fact, mixing business with pleasure is a concern for users who might not want their new boss hearing about their high jinks on vacation. This reality could provide a stumbling block for Jobster's latest feature, which enables users to add endorsements from Facebook friends to their résumé cover letters.

Rablois is skeptical of Jobster's plan. "Why would I want recommendations of my skills or a dedication posted along with drunken photographs?" he wonders. And won't employers disregard friends' recommendations as entirely, unashamedly biased?

Jobster's Anderson says users have expressed the same concern. "We've really had to work to clarify that companies won't see your profile, that you won't be 'friending' companies." Consequently, says Anderson, they won't be able to judge the friends you cite as references; they'll just know how many recommendations you have. But this means that Jobster Career Networking has to restrict its links to the social core of Facebook to function as a professional application. It's a risky strategy. Given that the application adds little to users' experience of Facebook, they might as well use Jobster.com or other recruitment sites. If users ultimately decide against linking their private and professional lives, companies will be quick to pull their support. For now, though, it's paying off: 52,000 users have downloaded the application since late July.

Showing a Green Side

I am Green lets users list simple environmentally conscious choices they make in their daily lives on their public Facebook profiles.