Zeynep Tufekci, Assistant Professor of Sociology, in Bloomberg Businessweek

Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor of sociology, commented in Bloomberg Businessweek on what she sees as the questionable utility of the site BranchOut, launched last July, which combines job searching, social networking and reputation promotion. BranchOut currently has about 400,000 active monthly users who can view three million job listings. Profiles are created by linking to existing Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, which grabs educational and work history data. A SocialScore feature, currently accessed by 5% of users, asks participants to choose which Facebook friends they would rather work with and tallies a score, which the company sees as potentially useful to recruiters. But it does have its critics. Tufekci notes, “Most of us do not want to relive middle school over and over again.”