Backed by Twitter’s Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman’s start-up incubator, the Obvious Corporation, Branch is a new social media platform that aims to make online social interaction function more like dinner table conversations.

How it works

Where most social media is like shouting out into the void and seeing what bounces back, Branch is more like an invitation-only dinner party. A sort of newsfeed/Twitter stream/old-school forum hybrid, it allows users to instantly create a space for easy-to-follow, on-topic conversations.

If you’ve got something you’d like to talk about (an article, video, Tweet, idea, etc.), you simply start a conversation “branch” and invite the people you’d like to talk to via either Twitter or email. Each person you invite gets a plus-one—they can invite someone similarly interested along, who in turn can invite someone along, etc., to help fuel the conversation. Basically, it’s all about talking to people you trust without your subject getting hijacked with all the tangents, filler, or petty bickering that can come with public-wide platforms.

Twitter integration

Described as “more characters, less noise”, perhaps the most obviously appealing feature of Branch is the ability to use Twitter as the jumping off point for a conversation.  By clicking the “take it to Branch” bookmarklet, Branch grabs tweets and ads everyone who was @replied in the thread to the conversation on Branch. You can then use Branch to carry on a lengthy, subject-specific conversation without it being broadcast publicly across Twitter and without the inhibiting character limits.

While Branch has just come out of beta testing and is currently invite-only, interested parties can request an invite to try the service at Branch.com.