Linkedin and Twitter Post Split: The Best Decision for Both
September 6th, 2012 by
An odd couple indeed.
It was an odd pairing to begin with, a one-off that was a bit out of left field even when Linkedin and Twitter joined forces in late 2009. It was much like that couple in your friends group with different values and nothing in common, but who work… for a time. Linkedin is a B2B paradise with a focus on member engagement, lead generation and advertising. Twitter, on the other hand, is B2C utopia due to the brand awareness and engagement-driving “promoted tweets” feature.
Linkedin is now being used for what it was initially intended: to build engagement, drive leads and sell their advertising product for companies and job openings. Twitter is now “working on themselves” — and no, this doesn’t mean a yoga membership and a few dates to get over Linkedin. They’re back to the lab and focused on growing their applications.
All Linkedin posts that were synced to Twitter in the past automatically optimized each post specifically for Twitter. Now, they are completely standard if you share to Twitter. These changes come from Twitter creating more uniform guidelines around API sharing and a more in-depth focus on their own applications and tools. Raven Tool’s Courtney Sieter (who was one of the most engaging and educational speakers of Search Exchange this year) came out with 10 Linkedin Shortcuts for a Post-Twitter World which I found extremely helpful.
You can still share your Linkedin updates on Twitter, but not the other way around. For some, this is a tragic loss; for other tweeple whose feed represents a birds-eye view of Texts From Last Night’s “Best Ever” category, it’s a hidden blessing (seriously, just un-link your accounts at that point). This severance has also greatly reduced the amount of frivolous and ill-suited posts that used to clog the Linkedin feed.
Pre-breakup Linkedin Engagement Level:
Now: Chock-full of Goodness!
Like that one mismatched couple who had their good years, this split seemed sudden at the time; however, they’re just better off doing their own thing. Both companies made the best move possible to not only grow their own revenue and product, but to separately work on custom initiatives important to their users. Since the split Linkedin has had a facelift, redesigning their look and feel to engage users by keeping them on the page longer. Conversely, Twitter makes 90 percent of its revenue in advertising, and it’s time to focus on themselves. Historically, they were giving too much of themselves through third party applications and at the end they had a smaller piece of the pie. For Twitter, it’s time to stop self-sacrificing and be a little selfish for more lucrative results.
