Layoffspace: A "Network For The Unemployed"

Its co-founder, Jake Ludwinski, explained to Red Herring how he (and his brother, Maciej) came up with the idea.  "People who are unemployed are really down on themselves," he said.  "They have all this time on their hands.  What do they do with it?  We need a place where we can get them together."

Layoffspace might, in an ideal world, be that place.  It all comes back to unemployed people being "really down on themselves," though; given the stigma often associated with being unemployed, users may be hard to attract.  The current state of the site – its forums are pretty much ghost town – speaks to this problem.

Another possible deal-breaker is the site’s insistence that visitors register.  Try as you might to scope out various groups, blogs, or job boards, Layoffspace will (after allowing you to click around for a few minutes) insist that you enter your first name, last name, e-mail address, password (twice), and deal with a CAPTCHA.

Alternatively, Layoffspace’s lack of users might just be a symptom of its newness – the site was only launched late this past April.  And the Red Herring interview does briefly address that problem.  "The brothers plan to introduce advertising once the site build traffic – hopefully in a few months," wrote Ken Schachter.

It would seem that, for the time being, sites such as Indeed and LinkedIn still deserve top billing, but for the truly unemployed (i.e., people with nothing to do but hunt for jobs and network), Layoffspace might be worth a look.