"The
unusually big spurt ... which the company says has come without any marketing growth, indicates that Facebook users want professional social networking," Inside Facebook insists. "They just apparently
hadn't been given a tool that met their needs. This bodes well for other Facebook recruiting tools, including Identified and Work4 Labs."
BranchOut launched in August 2010 as a simple app that showed users where their friends worked, and let them connect with friends to see employment of second-degree contacts. This past May, BranchOut secured an $18 million second round of funding from Redpoint Ventures, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Floodgate, on top of a previous $6 million first round.