[sitmaster]

The core idea of localbacon seemed really good, in essence creating a market for job applications so that both job seekers and employers would treat the application as if it were worth something (as opposed to most job sites where the applications are largely worthless). Now they took that idea and added social networking, for some reason. The localbacon idea was good on it's own, and the social networking-based job website idea is perhaps good on it's own, but what is the synergy between the two mechanisms? If you're going to help applicants gets recommendations from their friends who already work at a company, why do you need the pay-to-apply mechanism? If someone is paying to apply who cares if they know anyone at the company? Both of these are good methods of screening applicants, so why have both?

It seems to me that this company would be better off focusing on one idea or the other and doing it well.

[sitmaster]

Looking at the article more carefully, it actually seems to me that these two ideas aren't just not synergistic, but are actually antagonistic. It says you can either buy job application credits, or earn them by farting around with your profile and sending messages. As an employer, I think I'd much rather hear from someone who bought some credits to apply than from someone who got their credits by spending a lot of time on facebook. The social networking angle makes the pay to apply angle less valuable, I think.