Social Networking’s New Networking

Just when you think that social media sites couldn’t possibly connect you with the world anymore, now they are connecting with each other. That’s right, LinkedIn and Twitter now provide users who have accounts on both networks with the ability to simultaneously update their status on both sites.

The link up between the two popular social media sites will essentially streamline the status update process for users with accounts on both networks. As an example, before the link up, users with both a Twitter and a LinkedIn account had to go into both accounts separately in order to update their status. However, with the addition of the new functionality, users will be able to simultaneously update their status on both sites from either their Twitter or LinkedIn accounts. For those professional “tweeters”, this new link will allow them to market themselves on LinkedIn while increasing their professional audience. The same is true for LinkedIn subscribers who post to their accounts as now they will not only be able to reach their followers on Twitter, but also those Twitter users who search for keywords, phrases, etc.

While the linkage between these networks seems to promote a streamlining of the update process and an increase in audience size for users, there is always a word of warning that should be applied when mixing business with pleasure. By linking a site such as LinkedIn where a person’s identity is public with Twitter where the same person can remain anonymous, it may be hard for many users to keep their two identities separate. For instance, some users may say things on their Twitter account that they would never post to LinkedIn and vice versa. With the two networks now being linked it will be important for users to remember where they are posting. Even though the new feature provides an option for dictating what accounts (Twitter, LinkedIn or both) an update gets posted to, users will still need to be aware of what they post and where. After all, one may never know if their future employer is checking out their LinkedIn profile only to see an inappropriate Tweet from their Twitter account that could damage their personal “brand”. While there are many advantages to this new feature, my advice is to be aware as you never know who is reading.

Here is a link to a recent MSNBC article on the new feature: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33833090/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/