Monday, June 14, 2010

LinkedIn Brings Business Connections to Twitter

In November 2009, LinkedIn, the popular social networking site geared to business professionals, released a new feature that allowed you to update your status via Twitter. Now they have apparently taken this one step farther. LinkedIn decided to further build out this integration. By installing the Tweets application, LinkedIn users will be able to find and manage their LinkedIn connections on Twitter through LinkedIn. The application allows you to see which people you are connected to on LinkedIn also have Twitter accounts listed in their profiles. Not only does this application show you a list of the names but it even allows you to follow people through the Tweets application. This new feature will basically eliminate the need to go back and forth on these two sites. Another distinct feature of the application is that you can take all of your LinkedIn connections and turn them into a private Twitter list.

LinkedIn will also keep this list current by updating it based on your connections. So it appears that worlds are officially colliding. This new integration of social and business networking will certainly expand the reach and inner connectivity among online users. It should also cause an overlap between Twitter's primarily younger demographic and LinkedIn's older demographic. This is especially important not only because these sites appeal to different demographics but because many of the Twitter followers do not currently have a LinkedIn profile, and vice versa.

It appears the social media game is officially changing as the social graph continues to evolve. Who knows perhaps the Internet will soon be a one-stop shop providing access to an infinite number of online applications, provided by a finite number of websites. One thing's for sure LinkedIn and Twitter's latest integration will increase the level of scrutiny for corporations in evaluating the social conduct and public behavior of its employees. I would expect many recent college graduates will re-evaluate which posts, pictures, tweets they post in the future. This appears to only be the beggining of what's to come...

For more information on the article, click on the link, http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/05/25/find-and-follow-your-linkedin-connections-on-twitter/.

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