Zappos, the online retailer and subsidiary of Amazon, raised eyebrows last week by announcing that it’s scrapping job postings in favor of a social approach. Prospective employees are now encouraged to join its social network to become Zappos Insiders, and start interacting with its recruiters on Facebook, Twitter and on the company blog.

A few months ago the iconoclastic Amazon-owned company also said goodbye to job titles, and it’s not alone in deciding to eliminate and evolve some traditional human resource functions. In fact, other companies are doing away with HR employees entirely, replacing them with software and outsourced services.

It all goes back to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s statement that “Customer service shouldn’t be a department. It should be the entire company.” So if job postings are obsolete in this real-time, social era, is this the beginning of the end for HR?

Of course not. But irony aside, what is the impact of a company removing the humans from its human resources department or taking other non-traditional approaches to HR? On the plus side, it may save money in the near term by outsourcing or paying for software instead of salaries for HR employees. But replacing onsite personnel trained to settle disputes or manage sensitivities—and liabilities—around hiring and firing may prove difficult.

Some companies may be showing HR the door as much for the message it sends as for efficiency and operational reasons. Removing the department could help position a brand as progressive or experimental. It speaks to a flatter structure and more egalitarian corporate culture, putting more accountability in the hands of each employee. In fact, while HR is not always directly associated with branding, the way a company treats people is arguably more central to its brand than what it looks and sounds like, what it says, or even what products or services it offers.

Ultimately, dramatic changes to HR make sense for a brand like Zappos, already known for avant-garde employment practices like paying (or firing) people who don’t embody its ten core values to quit, and hosting bootcamps for other companies that hope to emulate Hsieh’s brand of corporate happiness.

With more inbound job candidates than its recruiters can handle, eliminating postings and finding candidates via social interactions may not hurt Zappos in the near term. Whether similar moves could work for more established companies and more conservative brands is another question. For now, we can rest assured that while the composition of tomorrow’s HR department is uncertain, reports of its death have been exaggerated.