Facebook is about to go face-down to $25 a share — but CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be saved by a new recruiting startup. (Recruiting industry watcher Joel Cheesman just keeps serving these flapjacks up, hot off the grill. I’m still LMAO about the last one.)
Identified.com
The Stanford University-spawned start-up Identified.com just got $21 million in sucker capital funding. (Disclosure: I went to Stanford and have yet to raise $21 million, but I do not hold that against Stanford.) And what does this “fastest growing career site for young professionals” actually do?
Yep — Identified.com sends traffic to Facebook.
Judging by the time-honored rule of putting your best assets right out front on your home page, Zuck’s got a winner by the short hairs. Somebody finally got the message — just send ’em over to FB right away!
Plus it’s not boring.
That’s the value proposition right off the bat. All you have to do is KMA and “Turn On Platform.”
Not Boring: Identified hangs out with Richard Branson
Courtesy of the Sacramento Bee, you can read all about it in the “unedited press release,” which explains nothing about how the “business” works. Well, it does say that Identified.com:
- “transform[s] professional identity through gamification”
- “aims to help young people achieve their professional goals”
- “[is] taking the principles of game design and applying them to managing your career”
- “[is] helping young people leverage data to make career choices in a fun, interactive way”
Then I realized where I’ve seen some of this stuff. It kinda reminds me of the classic resume objective statement: “I want to work with people to achieve my professional goals in a progressive company!”
But, the company’s business model, displayed on its front page, is that it’s driving more users to Zuck’s website… and that’s good for America.
And Identified hangs out with Richard Branson.
Dick Is Not On The Website
But the website doesn’t say dick about how it helps people and employers get together to fill jobs.
Because when I spent a few minutes to figure out what the proposition really is, all I learned is that:
- We just got $21 million bucks!
- We got new offices!
- We have a blog — with the same drivel about careers that you can find on Monster, CareerBuilder, and TheLadders! (Remember TheLadders?)
- There’s nothing on our About page about what we actually do that creates value!
The website says as much about the business as the press release. If you want to actually do anything on Identified.com, you need to talk to Zuck:
Why would V.C.’s dump $21 milion into a website that sends all its traffic to Facebook?
“Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself — more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination.” (Cf., “We’re more popular than Jesus.“)
But then again, Wired also said:
“The sheer magnitude of Facebook’s success is one reason why, as the company charges toward what will likely be the most successful public offering in the history of capitalism…“
Disclosure: Wired is my favorite magazine. But like I said, Facebook is about to suck rocks at the bottom of $25 a share. (Facebook Deathwatch reports $25.87 at today’s close.)
If I were Tim Draper, Bill Draper, Innovation Endeavors, VantagePoint Capital Partners, and Capricorn Investment Group, I’d get Marc Cenedella on the phone, quick — Identified.com needs a better blog and a more capable hawker of recruiting services. (No disrespect to all these renowned V.C.s, but Dudes, I went to Stanford, too.)
How are we going to do that? Dunno, but it won’t be boring.
“What Facebook did for your social life, Identified is building for your professional life. How’re we going to do that? We’re going to make managing your career not boring.“
I was gonna say, who needs yet another online recruiting start-up? Who needs a business when you can just send all your traffic to Zuck?
But Cheesman already said it (I love this guy’s insights):
“The playbook for start-ups in the recruiting space usually goes something like this: Group of young, educated people — usually coming off their own job search, which apparently qualifies as experience in the employment space — come up with an idea to ‘make things better.’”
More Mooney?
When are the V.C.’s gonna learn that Facebook cow clicking is as good as it’s gonna get?
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