LinkedIn and Twitter join forces

LinkedIn has announced a new partnership with Twitter that allows users of both social networking services to interchangeably update their statuses from either service.

“The idea is simple,” said Co-Founder of LinkedIn Allen Blue. “When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.”

While LinkedIn is designed to help users build their professional identity on the Web, updating a status has also proved valuable to users. According to Blue, status has helped LinkedIn users find new assignments and jobs as well as launch companies. Integrating its services with Twitter allows LinkedIn to broaden its audience and in turn provide a better service to its users.

However, as Ian Paul of PC World points out, don’t forget that these two services are very different from each other. In a recent article titled Do’s and Don’ts for users, Paul writes, “If you integrate your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, be prepared to make smart choices about what you share across these services, because what’s perfectly acceptable on one network, may not work on the other.”

LinkedIn users who still wish to join accounts with Twitter can check the Twitter box under their Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps. Twitter users can choose to either send all tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

The new features are scheduled to roll out gradually over the next couple of days.