I’ve seen a fair bit of Twitter chat about BeKnown and after an initial thought that I really couldn’t be bothered with ANOTHER social network I decided to ditch the attitude and take a look.
Beknown is a Facebook app from Monster which allows you to create a professional/business profile for you and allows you to connect with people you know. It’s a bit like LinkedIn on Facebook.
You follow the process through (adding a summary, skills, experience, etc) in order to complete your profile. Even though part of this can be imported from LinkedIn I had deja vu doing this.
And as I was doing this I was wondering what the point of it was.
– It allows jobseekers to find jobs without leaving Facebook….. but just jobs that are posted on Monster… right?
– It creates a CV that you can use to apply for jobs with
– You can get endorsed by your contacts when applying for jobs
– You can post jobs (for free) to your first and second degree contacts (I like this bit – assuming you have a decent number of contacts).
– You collect “badges” for certain achievements (maybe that’s what put me off – I’m not really a gold star type of girl!)
From what I hear from geeks (and I use that word as a compliment) the app is really cool and sophisticated. I’ve also read reviews from people I respect (including the lovely Jim Stroud) saying that it’s a great app.
However, to me it seems limited. It sits within Facebook, it’s all about vacancies on Monster and I found the process annoyingly duplicative.
If your experience is different or you think I’m totally missing the point please share your thoughts and if you want to give it a go there is a step by step guide on About.
Completely agree Lou. I’ve been chatting to various people about the app and the feeling is mixed. I’m hearing lots of people that say Gen Y aren’t interested in LinkedIn, yet I’m categorised as Gen Y and am very much involved on LinkedIn. People have claimed it’s more for the grad market, but again, I don’t see the USP. Since social media exploded, there has been an infinite amount of ‘me too’ platforms and little actual innovation, just imitators. Obviously time will tell, but I believe LinkedIn has a much bigger range of features and BeKnown simply does not offer a unique selling point. And for graduates, surely many of them want to network with senior people, 90% of whom will be on LinkedIn? I think it’s asking people to change their behaviour, which always provides potential to fail.
Ditch the attitude lady…. 😉
I received an advertisement for this application today. Frankly, I am concerned with privacy. I don’t want BeKnown to be connecting with everybody on my facebook profile. I don’t want every person on my profile to be connected with my business, and I don’t want employers to be able to see everything on my facebook profile. There is a reason that I make my facebook information set as private to non-friends. Another concern is that BeKnown asks for permission to make posts as me. I don’t like that idea. I don’t want it to be posting advertisements, etc, as me.
I like the idea of something helping me get employed ore getting business, but I need to see some feedback regarding people’s experiences before joining.