Twitter's spree of partnerships isn't stopping anytime soon. Late last month, Microsoft and Twitter struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing. Mere hours later, Google struck back with its own search deal with Twitter.
Now there's a new Twitter partnership launching tonight. This one is between Twitter and LinkedIn, the popular business social network. Starting tonight and tomorrow morning, users of both services can sync their status updates. Yes, you can tweet from Twitter and it will update your LinkedIn, and vice versa.
The new feature, which will roll out overnight, allows you to cross-post to both networks. From the LinkedIn side, there is a Twitter Settings panel that allows you to link your accounts and choose whether your Twitter account appears on your profile. There is also now a special box that you can check to tell LinkedIn whether you want to tweet out specific status updates:
The integration on the Twitter side is even more interesting. In your settings, you can link your LinkedIn account to your Twitter and then choose whether you want to share all of your tweets on LinkedIn OR just specific ones by using one of two hashtags: #li or #in.
This is exactly like the Selective Twitter Status Facebook app, which updates your Facebook with the #fb hashtag. The difference this time is that Twitter officially supports the #li and #in hashtags for auto-updating LinkedIn:
The Future of the Twitter and LinkedIn Partnership
I spoke with LinkedIn co-founder Allen blue about the new partnership and its implications. He told me that the first serious talks between Twitter and LinkedIn occurred 3 to 4 months ago. Part of the reason that this partnership occurred is because Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman share a close relationship.
Perhaps the bigger revelation though is that there is the potential for even deeper integration between the two platforms. What Allen seemed most excited about was the potential for a business intelligence partnership. Presumably, LinkedIn could provide detailed connection and business data to Twitter, while the microblogging startup could provide real-time updates from the CEOs and employees of companies on the LinkedIn network.
While no deal of this nature is set, it's clear how the LinkedIn/Twitter relationship could be beneficial to both companies. Both Twitter and LinkedIn are growing at a rapid pace (in fact, LinkedIn has more users but less visitor traffic). The sync deal should provide LinkedIn a fresh boost of new, younger users, as well as increased exposure due to the hashtags. In return, Twitter gains exposure to LinkedIn's lucrative, influential, and growing user base.
The deal makes sense for both sides; in fact, we're surprised it didn't happen sooner. Whether they'll be able to expand upon this partnership, we have yet to see. However, the potential for lucrative business intelligence and data exchange is likely going to be too much for both companies to pass up.
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