Twitter Drops LinkedIn Integration

If you’re like a lot of LinkedIn users, you’ve probably been updating your profile by integrating it with your Twitter account. Whatever tweets you’ve written are automatically pulled into LinkedIn for all your LinkedIn followers to see. It’s easy, quick, and convenient, and now it’s over. Earlier this week Twitter announced that it has decided to focus on “providing the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools,” which means it has decided to stop integrating tweets into LinkedIn.

Twitter leaves Linkedin

Although some people are a bit surprised at the sudden turn-around on this three-year partnership, Twitter’s crack down on tweets doesn’t come from out of the blue. Twitter has gradually been restricting tweets being displayed on websites, but those efforts have been primarily focused on mobile clients. The company also placed a moratorium on third-party apps a year ago and has since stated that it would continue to introduce stricter guidelines on how its API is used, so it was only a matter of time before a major change came around.

By removing tweets from LinkedIn, Twitter hopes to generate more traffic on its own site. It’s probably no coincidence that this is happening at the same time as Twitter releases new features for advertisers, like expanded tweets and Twitter cards. It will be interesting to see how far Twitter decides to take this new focus. Will it stop allowing people to sync their accounts to Facebook? Will it continue to allow companies to pull in their tweets onto their website?

The partnership between Linkedin and Twitter has not completely ended, however, as LinkedIn still allows user to post status updates that can then be shared to their Twitter account.

While it may have been convenient to use the integration between Twitter and LinkedIn, we’ve always encouraged people to write separate updates for each social network.  By doing so, you will be able to target your audiences better and take advantage of the different functionality on each site.  If you have been using Twitter to update your LinkedIn page, visit our LinkedIn Tips for Business to learn more about how to improve your LinkedIn account.

What are your thoughts on this change? Let us know in the comments below.

For more information on how we can help you improve your company’s Twitter strategy or to learn about our other social media services, please contact our social media agency today.