See who else is interested
With the Twitter guys in the background, you can expect integration with Twitter. For example, you can announce your branch on Twitter with a description and a link to the Branch. They call it 'See who else is interested'. In addition, Branch invites people you select for the discussion via direct message .
See who else is interested
What do you gain professionally from Branch?
When we played with Branch this morning, we couldn't really think of many applications that Branch would excel in. Perhaps that limitation is also the tool's strength. In the early days of Twitter, we could also think of considerably fewer applications. We think it's a shame that you can't make conversations private: this makes the tool lose a lot of its power when it comes to business use as a social list to data collaboration tool. These are the business applications that we see for Branch:
Public (political) discussion
Since you control who participates in a discussion, you can ensure that you have a good substantive discussion with competent people. Given the openness of Branch, these will often be public discussions. I think that politics could use Branch to take a good look at certain themes.
Branch itself focuses specifically on publishers . They invite them to further discuss statements from their articles or books on Branch.
Co-founders Branch
Evan Williams and Biz Stone: Co-founders of Twitter and investors in Branch
Co-creation as the most beautiful application
The best application of Branch is co-creation ( open innovation ). When you are in an innovation process, it is very pleasant to continue on spin-offs of previous ideas. The highlight function makes it possible to select a part of a contribution and then discuss it in a new branch. These endless branches give the creative process a lot of space. The course of the discussion and the topics that people are triggered by provide an organization with a lot of insights.
Webcare teams
Branch can be an interesting tool for webcare teams to accommodate potentially longer conversations with the outside world. An employee can start a branch in which the customer is invited to continue the conversation. It is a pity that you cannot make branches private, then more sensitive matters could also be handled here. Perhaps Branch will come up with this later.
Good and in depth discussions
Branch is a nice tool for public discussions and co-creation. Because everything is open, it will not play a big role in business social collaboration. Perhaps webcare teams will find a small role for it. It certainly offers the possibility for good and in-depth discussions.
I am very curious how Branch will be picked up and used. Have you already been introduced to this new tool?