Professional social network LinkedIn has long had a feature that lets users update their status on their profile. But it’s plainly obvious that LinkedIn users don’t nearly use the status feature for mass communication as frequently as they use Twitter or Facebook for the same purpose. In fact, I surveyed a sampling of LinkedIn users who avidly use the site for networking but never update their status on their profile. Many didn’t even know that LinkedIn had a status update feature. Starting tonight, LinkedIn will integrate with Twitter, letting users sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa in real-time. So how does this work?
LinkedIn will now allow you to update your status on your LinkedIn profile and then share the message automatically to Twitter. To enable to enable the cross posting feature, you just need to click the new Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and sync with your Twitter account (via oAuth).
The integration works the other way as well. You can also share Tweets to your LinkedIn profile from Twitter or any other client by adding the hashtag “#in” or “li”. As part of the setup process on LinkedIn, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets that have the hashtag “in” from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update. You can also import your Twitter stream into your profile now, which is also an op-in feature. So your profile will show a “Recent Tweets” section that will include a real-time stream of your Tweets. The ability to show your Twitter stream in your LinkedIn profile no doubt provides a compelling social media context to your professional CV. As Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says in a video about the harmonious integration, “the business use case of Twitter is turning out to be very important.” He adds, “The persona they create for themselves on the web is part of their resume.” Stone also said LinkedIn and Twitter are as complimentary as “peanut butter and chocolate” (hence the logo).
It makes sense for LinkedIn to integrate with Twitter considering that its own status update feature isn’t tremendously popular. The ability to Tweet directly to your LinkedIn profile will add a good amount of fresh content and perhaps new traffic to the site for social purposes as well as for professional interests. And perhaps the Twitter integration will breathe new life to LinkedIn’s status update feature. AIM and MySpace also made similar moves by adding the two-way sync with Twitter. As my colleague Erick Schonfeld eloquently wrote recently, LinkedIn, like other social media sites and networks, is realizing that it’s better to swim with the stream than against it.
The odd man out in this announcement appears to be Facebook, who has yet to add Twitter syndication to its functionality for all users. It would also make sense for LinkedIn to sync with Facebook, but LinkedIn’s co-founder and VP of product strategy Allen Blue says it something that the site “may consider in the future.”
Blue says that for now, LinkedIn is concentrating its efforts on Twitter thanks to the “great amount of business conversations” that are taking place on the microblogging platform. But LinkedIn’s other founder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman, who recently joined VC firm Greylock as a partner, was an angel investor in Facebook, so it would make sense LinkedIn will play nice with Facebook in the future.
When asked about the possibility of a URL shortener being added to LinkedIn’s status update feature (which would be useful given the integration with Twitter), LinkedIn spokesperson Kay Luo said that would make a lot of sense and could be a possible addition in the future. Luo declined to say whether LinkedIn will be creating their own URL shortener or integrating with one of the billion other shorteners out there.
LinkedIn is no doubt growing, reaching 50 million users a few weeks ago and innovative features like this should only add to the social network’s popularity. And as Twitter continues to globally, this will compliment LinkedIn’s considerable international presence.
It’s important to note the Twitter feature will be gradually rolled out over the next 24 hours to all LinkedIn users.
I’m just waiting for the day that twitter goes down and all these twitter services become obsolete.
You gotta love that whale
should http://www.ventnation.com allow that feature?? for now users are able to retweet or even share with Facebook..
This is excellent news! I have had my LinkedIn account for a while but am just starting to really use it and realizing it can be a powerful tool. Integrating Twitter is a great idea and I am very happy LinkedIn has chosen to do it.
http://linkedin...w=480&h=320
Linkedin should implement spell check on its status box…or at least check UI mocks for obvious spelling errors.
Excellent news? Considering how many people actually spend time on Linkedin, it is more like Hi5 or Friendster adding a twitter widget on their site. No one really cares.
Btw, all you are going to see is more automatic feed coming into Linkedin as more people are spending time on Twitter and not Linkedin
Begs the question, is this news coming out to counter all the bad press Linkedin has been getting lately?
Linkedin is doomed to follow Hi5 and Friendster and not the mention MySpace. They are struggling to stay relevant.
I agree with you. They are great tools separately but also make an awesome combo. To make sure everyone on all networks stay in the loop it is great to utilize them. Eventually, all of the main social media sites will see it in their best interest to link up.
Yup, I’d have to agree with Dain—this is great! LinkedIn is really gaining steam as a social networking platform and it’ll be great to have the status update feature shared between the networks upon request.
I’m glad that LinkedIn actually realized that having their own “status update” section does not really work. Everyone’s eyes are focusing (big time) on Twitter and Facebook these days. Everyone, from a regular Joe to large corporations use at least one of the two “Social Media” tools.
I understand posting status updates from within LinkedIn app and they show up on Twitter but how many of you would actually do the opposite?
Not a bad idea to use the #in hashtag, wonder who came up with that one?
I think this will breathe some new life into LinkedIn. It has definitely done so for MySpace with their twitter sync capability. Now just make sure you keep those tweets professional!
NO!!! This is already too annoying just from those having figured out the ping.fm route. LinkedIn interface cannot sustain the volume of traffic or refinement/filtering that twitter clients allow, and will become very difficult to manage.
Agree, all for adding context with tweets but the firehose approach is not very helpful, like the #linkedin tag approach to filter.
A cool feature, unless of course your tweets are ’shitmydadsays’ as MG just posted earlier. You might want to keep that out of Linkedin.
The chocolate and peanut butter image is awesome btw.
Tell me about it. A couple of weeks back, I tweeted “Finally! Here come the dancing girls!
Yeah, I prbably won’t be connecting that account to my LinkedIn profile.
That is good, isn’t it?
My LinkedIn page has had my Twitter updates for months now. What gives?
Great news and an important step for LinkedIn and its users…
Haha! The chocolate and peanut butter analogy is good idea.
As much as I’ve taken Linkedin to task of late, this is a pretty interesting feature. Let’s hope it has enjoyed more dev/qa/qc attention that prior Linkedin orthogonal extensions.
It’s also a small step closer to social vetting vs. the raw text input fields.
i noticed you can start “following” today.
amazing what a simple concept behind communication has taken off across social platforms.
now it looks like this article might have been too much for the site:
Your LinkedIn Network Will Be Back Soon
We’ve notified our operations staff that you are having a problem reaching LinkedIn. We’ll get you reconnected soon.
It gets better. You can add multiple Twitter IDs to your LinkedIn profile http://twitpic.com/oz3ga
“hey, you got LinkedIn in my Facebook!”
“hey, *YOU* got Facebook in my LinkedIn!”
2 great tastes that taste great together
Reid’s peanut butter social networking cups.
(lol)
Hm, maybe I’m bling but no such buttonin my account. Is it only meant for upgraded members, or still not globally implemented? Sobbing greetings from Germany
I hate this. Twitter is for Twitter updates. Linked in updates are what I use to tell what people are doing in relation to business. If I have to sort through “ate a sandwich” and “took the dogs out for a walk” to get to “just connected with (important person)” it reduces the value to Linked in considerably.
I tend to agree. Twitter, even with professionals I follow, has way too much noise. I don’t need another place for that noise. It was nice only occasionally having updates from those in my linkedin network. Sending linkedin updates to twitter would be good, but getting crap from twitter back is bad.
I agree 100%. I barely use linkedin, but I sure as heck don’t see my tweets (or those of others) improving the content on linkedin one bit.
I don’t tweet for professional networking!
Hopefully LinkedIn will make it possible to turn Twitter updates off, from all your contacts. Not interested in what latte you ordered from starbucks this time.
Yes.finally. More clutter to my already cluttered Linkedin page. When is the last time people actually checked their Linkedin profile. Here is me:
Facebook – once or twice a day
Twitter – Once every two hours or so
LinkedIn – Once every 3 – 4 months
I am sure a lot of people are in the same boat.
This will be helpful for many as the ping.fm link to LinkedIn hasn’t been working for many users.
While the sharing of content between Twitter and LinkedIn will bring in more fluff posting to the business network, it will also provide a more complete picture of the person you are reviewing. It may be like adding a glimpse into their mind and thought process.
Do you really want to hire someone who spends all day posting about nonsensical stuff? No, you want to hire the person who is actively building a brand, posting valuable information, and supporting its customers.
And yes, I hardly check LinkedIn. Smart for them to integrate and give users a reason to check in more often and spend more time on the site.
Thanks for the analysis. I’m finding mixed reactions to the Linkedin Twitter alliance through TipTop’s real-time semantic engine at
http://www.feel...ter%20Linkedin/.
This could seriously backfire on LinkedIn. A large % on Twitter likes to keep their identities secret, allowing them to freely express their opinions. Say I am a finance consultant working for Govt/IBanks, created a professional LinkedIn profile and expect to find a new job in the coming 6 months. Should I stop twittering now ? or stop using altogether ? It isn’t just what you will or will not say, the tone I use on Twitter is different to that of my professional profile. And I like to keep it that way.
Wrong strategic move for LinkedIn.
I love this. A decent percentage of CloudProfile users are individuals (the bulk are small businesses) who are using it as a kind of social and conversational hub. In those scenarios we’ve still seen Twitter and Facebook as the primary mechanisms for ongoing social discovery and engagement, but we do get requests for LinkedIn integration. It’s usually for those users that are either looking for a job or using LinkedIn groups for professional networking. By opening up the platform to Twitter, our users can now talk in one spot for either short or long updates and push all the way through and keep their LinkedIn profile “alive”.
The screencast of how to set it up is embarassingly simple – http://bit.ly/413jHD.
Thank you to Twitter and LinkedIn for making this happen.
Hmm… I wonder if http://www.muttr.com will implement this in the future.
Collaboration between LinkedIn and Twitter makes more business sense than would a similar collaboration with Facebook.
At least as of now, Twitter’s business model doesn’t rely on access of data from their domain. Twitter is built upon multi-client syndication, and from a somewhat simplistic point of view, we could look at LinkedIn as yet another client. Of course there’s much more, and that’s why I used the word “simplistic.”
Facebook on the other hand, like LinkedIn, presumably derives substantial ad revenue from users being logged into their domain.
Therefore, to the extent that Facebook members would park themselves at LinkedIn instead of Facebook, there would be a loss of revenue.
Twitter’s role as a micro-blogging syndication service is very powerful.
Good to see some spice flavor for Linkedin. Else my Linkedin status was not updated from long
A smart move for LinkedIn.