So there’s been a notable couple of developments to try and get people to use their LinkedIn accounts more.
If you use the social network, you may have had to add additional information in the past few months to have a complete profile – even it if was previously at 100%.
Now statuses posted on Twitter will no longer synch with LinkedIn – unless you post on the LinkedIn site first.
Here’s what LinkedIn have to say about how to continue to share updates on both LinkedIn and Twitter:
Simply start your conversation on LinkedIn. Compose your update, check the box with the Twitter icon, and click “Share.” This will automatically push your update to both your LinkedIn connections and your Twitter followers just as before.
LinkedIn are very clear – your status WILL NOT update if you post via Twitter first, even if you set the platform to do this in the past.
This is an interesting move – Twitter and LinkedIn have worked in partnership since 2009 and as it’s still possible to update across the two platforms, this evidently hasn’t changed. A boost to help LinkedIn’s waning popularity perhaps and drive more traffic? They certainly hope to make it the default interface for updates from what I can see.
The big question is this – will people bother? They’ll still need to use Twitter itself to engage with followers, gather stats etc. With so much to do in a small amount of time, busy professionals may just use LinkedIn as an online CV and let the status element fall by the wayside.
If you have further details or know more about this than I’ve been able post here please do share your comments – this is interesting!
About Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall is a public relations consultant. She is a board member of the CIPR and managing director of Sarah Hall Consulting.
5 Comments
I suspect this is a misguided tactic to try and increase on-site engagement; after all, if you can update your LinkedIn status via other mechanisms, there’s really no need to visit the site at all. If this is true, they’re missing the point somewhat.
If there really is no other reason to visit the site, they’ve got bigger problems to address than where and how someone updates their status. Perhaps they should be looking at their proposition more closely, and giving users a reason to visit more often, instead of trying to lock them in by default through a service which doesn’t quite fit their model in the first place.
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, with shortform broadcast messaging at its core; very different from their own platform, which is a business connection management utility allowing people to maintain large numbers of loose connections with people who may or may not be useful to them in the future. Twitter users will never switch to LinkedIn to publishing their daily/hourly updates, because the audience simply isn’t there. It’d be like talking to themselves.
The only compelling reason for a user to have their status update on LinkedIn is to showcase to their business connections all the interesting conversations they’re having or starting on Twitter!
I totally agree with Alex, and the questions you raise here are spot on. It just seems so incredibly misguided.
I would view the synchronised twitter updates as a nice to have feature of LinkedIn, not a critical one, and to try and force users down this route, kind of goes against the general etiquette of social media – not a good move.
Oh dear LinkedIn. Fail.
It’s a good move, I for one have removed people from my linkedin contacts who had every tweet appearing as a linked in status, as they flood the page and make it difficult to see what others are up to and of course the tweets ate sometimes difficult to fathom in the confinement of the linked in site.
LinkedIN status updates should be about what’s happening in your business, help you need or can offer not what you had for tea. I’ve seen blogs for the last year saying the same thing so I think this is a good move and I may use LinkedIN in more as it might start to fulfill its function as a business network rather than trying to be a social network.
I’ll bet those who have had their accounts linked haven’t been getting any responses via LinkedIN anyway, as it’s not the right medium.
Interesting comment, John – I see what you’re saying & agree in a way but I don’t believe LinkedIn can in any way ever rival Twitter for quick updates & engagement and so will lose out. It works for those who prefer LinkedIn over Twitter or don’t use the latter but they are much thinner on the ground!
Hi Sarah
My point really is not in conflict with yours. LinkedIN can’t rival twitter for quick updates and engagement but then to me that is not what LinkedIN was originally about and they have made an error in the past trying to let it be about that.
In the early days of linkedin for example they used to tell site users you really shouldn’t connect with people you dont really know and wouldn’t be willing to put in touch with other people you know, but now I get requests from people I have never met in person probably never will and wouldn’t connect them with others as I don’t feel I really know them.