Yesterday, two of the world's largest social networks, LinkedIn and Twitter, announced an end to their partnership that allowed users to sync updates from the two sites. According to Twitter, the site is increasingly focused on "proving the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools." This essentially means that LinkedIn doesn't make the cut for that consistent set of tools, and LinkedIn users can no longer automatically sync their tweets to publish on LinkedIn.
How Does This Affect Your LinkedIn-Twitter Posting?
Even though all users do not set their Twitter updates to automatically appear on LinkedIn, many use the hashtags LinkedIn provides to post selected tweets. Previously, LinkedIn users could connect their Twitter account, and then select the option that reads, "Share only tweets that contain #in or #li in your status updates." This way, Twitter users could carefully select which tweets they wanted published to their professional profile without ever having to go on LinkedIn itself. Users have now been ripped of that ability, and must go straight to LinkedIn to post an update.
After running a report for keyword use in HootSuite, we discovered that between January first of this year until now, hashtag #in has been tweeted 1,746,618 times while hashtag #li has been tweeted 192,873 times. While it's plausible that the former hashtag has been used for other messages (such as "Got a new job! #in), the latter is LinkedIn specific. Regardless, hashtag #in on average is tweeted 9,650 times a day, while hashtag #li on average is tweeted 1,065 times a day. The following graph shows each hashtag's use over time from January 1st 2012 to June 28, 2012.
Clearly, a large audience automatically updates LinkedIn through Twitter. These users will now be forced to post their LinkedIn updates seperately. Or, how LinkedIn positions it, "Simply 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 you’ve been able to do previously."
Basically, users can post from LinkedIn and have that message go out to its Twitter following, but not vice versa.
How Does This Change Your Marketing?
With the previous LinkedIn-Twitter partnernship, any post that was uploaded to LinkedIn (whether on your personal profile or company page) automatically hyperlinked Twitter handles and hashtags. When users clicked on that Twitter handle or hashtag in LinkedIn, they were automatically sent to that Twitter profile or Twitter search with tweets using that hashtag.
For example, in the LinkedIn post below to the HubSpot company page, users could previously be directed to HubSpot's Twitter account, or see all the users tweeting with #HubSpot. When you click on these links now, Twitter does a search in "LinkedIn Updates."
This takes away marketers' ability to easily link their campaigns together. For example, when HubSpot hosts a webinar with a hashtag for questions, we update our LinkedIn company status with the hashtag so viewers can easily go from LinkedIn to the stream of tweets for the webinar.
Does this new breakup impact your social media strategy? How so?


Shane Reiser 10:07 AM on June 30, 2012
Solution for this = bufferapp.com
Greg 11:36 AM on June 30, 2012
I applaud this. Its going to get a lot quieter and more real on LinkedIn as a result. People will actually read what you've written, b/c they have to go there to post it.
Sune @ ExtraIncomeBlogger 11:45 AM on June 30, 2012
Luckily it doesn't really impact my social media strategy too much because I have never really relied on this method. But I can't understand the reason they did this - I mean, doesn't it just seem very unnecessary?!
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
Timothy Lorang 1:35 PM on June 30, 2012
I am not sure this is that bad. It is continent for over worked social media managers but it also clogged up LinkedIn with a lot of frivolous posts from people who posted every tweet on LinkedIn. I think it is way more valuable to be able to send a tweet from LinkedIn then to send a LinkedIn post from Tweeter.
Michael Reynolds 2:19 PM on June 30, 2012
I, for one, am glad this happened. I've grown weary of seeing my LinkedIn news feed full of @ symbols and hashtags from people who are obviously not logging in and would rather just mindlessly blast their updates into LinkedIn via Twitter.
Hopefully this will promote real engagement!
Now, if only Facebook would follow suit :)
efhale 2:22 PM on June 30, 2012
I agree with Timothy Lorang that this is better for Linked In than twitter. I think Twitter has it's uses but it clogged Linked In with too much non information.
Patina Marketing 2:25 PM on June 30, 2012
I agree that its a good move for LinkedIn users. Irrelevant updates in LinkedIn are a consistent issue and I think it's a good move to send a tweet to Twitter from LinkedIn then the other way around.
hire seo specialist india, full time seo specialist 4:51 PM on June 30, 2012
Thanks for your nice comments. I am glad that this information has been of use to you.
Bjorn Gevert 6:32 PM on June 30, 2012
I thought thisi was a good way to keep my Linkedin account alive and relevant. Now I must look for some third party appliction to push myTweets into Linkedin.
Cheers Bjorn Gevert
Karen Swim 10:02 PM on June 30, 2012
As others have said, I applaud the change. While HubSpot's use of the linked feature made sense, far too many others cluttered the LinkedIn stream with updates not relevant to that audience. As marketers it forces us to adapt content for each of the platforms and not simply ping the same updates to all channels. Hopefully Facebook is next.
Roniet Berci 1:42 AM on July 01, 2012
It's great! it forces LinkedIn to get more social whilst staying professional. Though LinkedIn changes seem to evolve more slowly, it's my favorite growing/useful social network
Bhavesh Gudhka 3:53 AM on July 01, 2012
I use both twitter and linkedin to share my updates. I might not want all my tweets to be posted on Linkedin. It would be great idea to share Linkedin updates on twitter.
I welcome this step.
paolo benvenuto 4:21 AM on July 01, 2012
I believe it was a good move as it looks like so many tweets coming from twitter appear as SPAM, so now with Linkedin not showing these any longer, it will be more serious and professional. Good one!
Ric 11:29 AM on July 01, 2012
As many have said above ... thank god ... maybe it will get rid of all that useless chatter from LinkedIn. I stopped paying attention to the news feed ages ago. It was impacted with undecipherable tweets and uninteresting re-tweets.
I saw it as the most negative aspect of LinkedIn ... glad to see it go.
Tarjinder S. Kailey 1:29 AM on July 02, 2012
Good News for those who hates SPAM. Thanks Anum for sharing ;-)
Rebecca Haden 9:35 AM on July 02, 2012
We've used the automatic push for years to allow clients to post blog posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Since most companies have different followers at each place, this let everyone have easy access to the blog posts. When G+ began emphasizing original content and real human interaction, Facebook soon dropped the autopost option for blogs. This looks like more of the same trend. inconvenient, and it may lead to greater differentiation of the Big Three social media sites, as people are forced to choose which one is really worth their time.
John 12:36 PM on July 02, 2012
It makes life tedious for me. I'd been queueing 3 tweets a day using Demandforce making sure they had #in. I'd also set my Facebook account to receive tweets. New was a neat way to synch activity across three platforms and audiences with "my" content, most of which was references to others and some of which was my own blog. I can understand the sentiments about noise on Li because of the banal nature of a lot of what is Tweeted. At the same time, if you're receiving trash from connections, then perhaps you've got the wrong ones. This step takes us backwards from one angle, the amount of time needed to manage multiple platforms. Guess we'll just have to become more creative...
Nancy Myrland 11:06 PM on July 02, 2012
This is good. I have watched my LinkedIn stream become mostly RTs (ReTweets for non-Twitter users) automatically cross-posted from Twitter. This means that people are not present on LinkedIn, and are cross-posting conversations out-of-context. They are not spending much time on LinkedIn actually interacting with their business contacts there, establishing relationships, sharing other’s content, conversing, and putting in the time necessary to learn about others who might be there, who are often those with whom they would like to do business. There are partial comments strewn with @names, acronyms, abbreviations and other messages that have caused LinkedIn’s main stream to become little more than broadcast medium, vs. a social medium.
This begs the question: ”If everyone is cross-posting from other social networking sites, and are not present, who is going to be on LinkedIn to actually read that content that is being posted?”
Group activity and discussions can overcome this lack of presence in the main stream, but that’s a conversation for another day.
amelia 3:11 AM on July 03, 2012
If you require fans so you can have bragging rights, robot generated fans can be delivered under 24 hours.and also above infomation is very useful.
amelia 3:12 AM on July 03, 2012
If you require fans so you can have bragging rights, robot generated fans can be delivered under 24 hours.and also above infomation is very useful.
Amy Vernon 11:53 AM on July 03, 2012
This is a fantastic move and, frankly, will only be good for marketers, because their posts on LinkedIn will actually be seen by people and not buried in a sea of irrelevant tweets.
Rina As 7:21 PM on July 03, 2012
Things like this hopefully not a major adverse impact on my web marketing strategy in social media
Colleen Bruneau 10:32 AM on July 05, 2012
I agree with the enthusiasm above. I think it's a great move. Twitter updates clogging up LinkedIn can be trying. Nice update!