LinkedIn Boards the Twitter Train

These days, it seems that everyone wants to be pals with Twitter, the microblogging phenom. On the morning of Oct. 21, Microsoft announced a deal for its Bing search engine to search for Twitter updates known as tweets. Just hours later, Google announced a similar deal.

Not to be left out, the professional online networking service LinkedIn on Nov. 10 is announcing its own integration with Twitter. Users of both services will be able to sync some or all of their tweets on Twitter and “network updates” on LinkedIn.

Specifically, users in LinkedIn will be able to check a “tweet this” box near their network update post to Twitter. And while on Twitter, they can add the hashtags “#in” or “#li” to their posts to appear on LinkedIn. Finally, a new app called Tweets will let users put their Twitter streams on their LinkedIn profiles.
here are the details in a blog post from Allen Blue, a LinkedIn cofounder and vice-president of product strategy:

I’m excited to announce that starting today, users can sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, allowing them to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa. This allows you to amplify your professional activities on Twitter while keeping them organized and structured on LinkedIn. We think the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Watch Biz and Reid come to that inevitable conclusion in the video below!

LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding jobs to kick-start a global business enterprise.
Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.

How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?

It will take a few hours to roll out the feature to everyone (so be patient!), but with today's launch, we're making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here's how it works:

1. On LinkedIn

Want to share a status message about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with a broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is click the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

2. On Twitter

As you travel across the web, you’ll often find articles or reports that would be useful to share with your LinkedIn connections. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn.

So go ahead and get started. Join your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.