Twitter and LinkedIn will start letting users sync their accounts starting Tuesday, allowing posts from LinkedIn to appear in Twitter streams, and vice versa. It’s a move aimed at the growing base of business users who take advantage of social networking sites.
LinkedIn, with more than 50m members, is the largest professional network on the web. Twitter, meanwhile, has become a favourite social site for brands, marketers and self promoters (not to mention idle worker bees).
The partnership makes a good bit of sense, and could prove useful. For an employer seeking to fill an open position, posting the job opening to LinkedIn might be the obvious move. But sharing it on Twitter and getting it re-Tweeted as well could increase the likelihood of the right set of eyes seeing the post.
For Twitter users who are keen to share articles, reports and job postings with their circle of contacts, broadcasting Tweets to a network of LinkedIn users simply amplifies the message.
LinkedIn users aren’t known to be an especially post-happy bunch, so the partnership could spice up LinkedIn pages with content that refreshes more regularly. It’s just the latest example of Twitter pushing its growing trove of content onto new platforms. Just last month Twitter posts began appearing in search results on Bing and Google.
For users, the integration is straightforward. If you have an account on both networks, a simple authentication will link the two. Then, when making a post on LinkedIn, one extra click will also share the post on Twitter. When posting from Twitter, users have the option of pushing all their Tweets into LinkedIn, or just those with the #in hash-tag.
When asked if there was any financial component to the partnership, such as a revenue share on ads or lead generation fees, LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue said, “We’re not releasing any financial details of the deal right now”. That, at least, suggests there is indeed a financial component. Mr Blue said this was just the beginning of the partnership, so look for more details to emerge in the coming months.
In a video, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone likened the collaboration to the scrumptious combination of peanut butter and chocolate. That’s a tasty pairing indeed, but it’s not the most ubiquitous combo. Aside from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Reese’s Pieces, and the odd cookie or slice of cake, the two flavours don’t often mix.
But perhaps that is the point. Syncing LinkedIn and Twitter won’t make sense for everyone. But for the devotedly social business user, the combination could prove addictive.
