LinkedIn is at it again with yet another upgrade to an app. The LinkedIn Twitter App first launched in November 2009 has undergone a bit of a face lift of sorts. When first launched, the application was limited to tweeting a status from your LinkedIn and vice versa with the #li or #in hashtags. Now you can cross connect your LinkedIn connections on Twitter to further interaction and converse on both platforms, retweet articles and share to your connections in our status updates.
The application is pretty standard as once the application can be found under More and clicking on Twitter from the drop down menu. The functionality is the same as if you were logged in to your twitter.com url. It does have 4 areas that it focuses on for ease of use and to avoid complete chaos as if your followers are like mine, they are very active tweeters.
The LinkedIn Twitter App Breakdown
1. Overview. The overview is your entire twitter stream of those that you follow. Updated pretty much in real time it displays 10 tweets per page with 25 pages. If you have an active group of Tweeters, this will update frequently and you will only have tweets that are 5-10 minutes old.
2. Connections. Here you can see which LinkedIn connections you are following on Twitter. Nifty little tool as for those that you are not following, you can check to follow them all and be cross-connected to further engage. Here you can unfollow people and also create a LinkedIn Twitter list that updates automatically when you cross-connect on the platforms.
3. My Twitter. A listing of all your tweets so you can quickly see what you have tweeted over the course of the day or past few days depending upon how active you are. Definitely easier and cleaner than how it is displayed on Twitter.
4. Settings. Determine how you want to see the tweets of your follower: all of them or just those that are hashtagged with #li or #in.
This information is the same contained on your Twitter profile but organized in a cleaner and neater way. This is probably more of a personal preference however it is not very often that I actually use twitter.com for my Twitter activity. TweekDeck is far more user friendly and convenient. LinkedIn is aiming to ensure that you never have to leave LinkedIn to converse with your connections. They are recognizing the popularity as well as the amount of tweets each day and as a means to try an capture that volume, the application need to be revamped. The functionality was not the only update as the Overview tab has an improved design and there is a new module “Connections to Follow” which recommends people you should follow based upon who you are connected to on LinkedIn. This is a bit redundant to the connections tab that tells you which of your connections you are not following on Twitter.
While this at first glance and a limited amount of interaction, this does seem useful but I just am not sure I really need to have my Twitter stream nor anyone else on my LinkedIn. In a recent post, Where is Your Strike Zone, I briefly broke down how we use each of the profiles and LinkedIn is business and not a free for all like Twitter. Twitter is fantastic and I love it but I love it for what it used for. LinkedIn I love as well but for the quality of what is shared. The articles in Groups, the discussions and ask/answer questions. I do like the connections tab so that I can quickly and easily cross connect but I am not sure I will be abandoning my TweetDeck any time soon.
What do you think? Will this make you more active on LinkedIn and also Twitter as it is a one stop to interact on 2 platforms?
