Dear LinkedIn – Please Sync Twitter to Your Status Updates

by Beth J. Bates on September 16, 2009 · 5 comments

For months I’ve been looking for a way to sync my Twitter updates with my LinkedIn status bar. I had a hard time believing that it wasn’t possible. To me, an important point of social media is to share information across platforms. So, why can’t I share from Twitter to LinkedIn?

Now, before you tell me I’m wrong, I am aware that I can post to Hellotxt of Ping.fm which will auto-post across multiple networks. And that’s fine. But I am on Twitter most of the time, so having to re-think how I post as well as not having my Tweetdeck functionality is more trouble than its worth. And, again, I have to say – shouldn’t LinkedIn sync with Twitter? How difficult could it be?

I finally asked my assistant Whitney to do some research to see what the heck I was doing wrong. She came across this blog post from LinkedIn that made me literally laugh out loud. Here’s the timeline from the February 2008 post and I’ve highlighted the most relavent comments to save you time.

March 12, 2008: Glen M. comments “The status is great, but ideally it could be linked to Twitter so it would simply pick up those feeds. Please?”
March 21, 2008: Chris from LinkedIn responds with “I like the idea of Twitter integration. I’ll look into how much work it would take. Only a small % of our users twitter, but I can see how it would be great for those that do.” Um, only a small % of LinkedIn users are on Twitter? Huh? OK, I know that this is from early 2008, but…huh?. Wait, it gets better.
March 26, 2008: Guy R. questions Chris’s March 21 statement. Way to go, Guy!
September 3, 2008: Malcolm asks about the status of Twitter.I mean it has been seven months since it was first requested. There will be no response until December 12.
December 12, 2008: Mario from LinkedIn says “Thanks for the feedback, @Darren. Vote counted!” Darren was one my many who requested this functionality.
December 22, 2008: D. Todd comments “Guys, you’ve GOT to enable LinkedIn users to update status via Twitter. Facebook and Plaxo have this capability, and honestly, my inability to do so has hampered my use of LinkedIn.” Agreed. The same day, Mario from LinkedIn says “Thanks for the feedback. We’ve received quite a few comments around that theme. Stay tuned.”
January 2, 2009: Wendy leaves the comment “My vote is for the Twitter sync! Have you read any of new stats on Twitter lately? I think you will find that a Twitter LinkedIn sync will only improve and increase your user base.” LinkedIn Mario’s response? “Have you tried the Company Buzz app on LinkedIn that pulls relevant tweets on your company from Twitter?” Huh? Diverting our attention isn’t going to work.
For the entire month of January 2009, users comment that they desparately want this sync. Here is LinkedIn Mario’s response on January 27, 2009, “Thanks for the Twitter sync votes As a Twitter user myself, I understand the benefit of syncing my LinkedIn status with Twitter. However, personally, I wouldn’t want to sync my Twitter feeds with my professional network! Feel free to clarify what kind of a sync (1-way, 2-way, etc.) you’re referring to. Stay tuned to the blog for further updates.” While I appreciate that Mario doesn’t want his professional contacts to know what he did Friday night, some of us understand how to balance our personal and professional updates. If he’s that worried, give users a little control to toggle Twitter feeds on or off.
February 7, 2009: (This is my favorite comment on the entire post which is lengthy). LinkedIn Mario says “Hashtags are definitely not common even among Twitter users, but it’s definitely an option to consider.” Hee hee hee..yeah…hash tags are definitely not common even among Twitter users. Now I’m starting to understand why LinkedIn can’t make this happen. He goes on to say “Moreover, you’re probably aware that you can use a service like ping.fm to broadcast your status to multiple social networks at the same time?” More misdirection.
February 26, 2009: Bill says, “I just cleared my LinkedIn status since I noticed it was 9 months old and long since relevant. I’ve probably done a hundred Twitter updates since then, which have automatically showed up on my blog, Facebook, IM status, screensaver, etc., but not on LinkedIn. Lately I’m making more professional contacts on Facebook and that’s where people are looking for my status updates. I just found myself on LinkedIn for the first time in months; there’s no daily unique content (like status updates) to keep me looking frequently.” Kudos to Bill.
May 20, 2009: LinkedIn Mario says “As someone who’s an avid user of both Twitter and LinkedIn, I’ve recommended similar functionality to the teams here. Stay tuned for breaking news on feature functionality.” Please note that between February 2009 and May 2009, there were multiple requests for Twitter updates.
September 8, 2009: This is the last series of comments and I think it sums it up. On Sept. 2, a woman named Barbara requested that she’d liked to use her LinkedIn status to update her website. On Sept.8, LinkedIn Dirk says that he’s forwarded her request to LI’s product management. The same day, Dave Brenner posts this: “Dirk – you’re forwarding a suggestion about using the linked-in status updates on people’s websites, but no response about allowing updates to be set from twitter? I have noticed that the social-net sites that I frequent the most are the ones which also allow integration. Coincidence or consequence? Bottom line is that I (and many others) use twitter to update status on numerous sites, including my blog. The idea that linked-in is locked out from these updates simply makes linked-in less relevant. NB not totally irrelevant, its got some purpose for me or I would have stopped checking in by now. But it’s really low on my radar primarily because of the lack of integration with other sites. Kudos, Dave Brenner. You said what we are all thinking. For the record, Dirk replied with “Understood. I’ve forwarded your comments as well as others about Twitter to the PMs for consideration as well. Thanks for your feedback.”

So, here’s the thing. LinkedIn – listen up! People want to update their status using Twitter regardless of whether you think its a good idea or that you have enough Twitter users on LI. Please, we’re begging, please tweak your API and allow us to update via Twitter. If not, I hear that Plaxo is gaining ground. Maybe I’ll have a look across the street.

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