The Inquisitr » linkedin

Twitter and LinkedIn get all warm and cozy … and the point is?

Steven Hodson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:04:36 +0000

My first thought when I read Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post at ReadWriteWeb about Twitter and LinkedIn forming a partnership was – huh?

The purveyor of 140 character dribble is partnering up with a social network meant to let the whole world know how important you are and if you are up for a new job.

For what reason?

After all it’s not like prospective headhunters and human resources people who are trolling for new employees are really gonna give a shit about some retweet of a retweet of a message that is more hashtags than content. Not to mention the fact are you really gonna care if your blathering on about how drunk you got at some cool social media conference ends up in your LinkedIn profile – in fact you might want to really rethink that idea.

This is a deal in my opinion that only serves the purpose of keeping both company names in the news starved tech blogosphere; and really in this case it only reminds people that LinkedIn still exists. It’s not like Twitter needs to remind anyone since it is already the most popular non-business business on the web right now.

There is no real advantage to any kind of partnership between the two companies mainly because they have totally different synergies. LinkedIn serves as a great place to have yourself up for sale to the highest bidder and Twitter is the best place for expounding non-sequiturs and other pointless messages to show that your live really isn’t as boring as it seems.

In the case of either company there is nothing that is of benefit to the other by forming some sort of so-called partnership. Well other than giving us all another non-story to talk about for the next few hours.

Twitter and LinkedIn Now Status Share. In Related News, LinkedIn Has Status Updates

Duncan Riley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:52:35 +0000

Twitter and business focused social network LinkedIn have signed a new deal that will allow users of both services to cross post status messages.

Users of LinkedIn will be able to link Twitter accounts to their profile, and select which messages are cross posted via a small Twitter option below the LinkedIn status entry field. Twitter users will be able to link their LinkedIn accounts, and (and this is perhaps the interesting part) use the hastags #li or #in to indicate that they want that Tweet to be posted to LinkedIn.

A spokesman for Twitter said that the wildly popular microblogging company wanted to take advantage of the strong identity in LinkedIn to make professional tweeters more successful…what ever that means.

The use of hashtags to indicate cross posting is a first for Twitter itself, although it has been used in third party tools before.

Google Exec Leaves For LinkedIn

JR — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:54:43 +0000

A Google exec credited with helping build the company’s monetization systems and mobile business has accepted a position with LinkedIn, according to recently published reports.

Dipchand “Deep” Nishar will become LinkedIn’s vice president of product strategy, the Wall Street Journal discovered. His role will reportedly focus on building new products and services — and, given the seemingly high amount of success he had doing that at Google, you have to wonder what sorts of things could be on the horizon now for LinkedIn. (The guy who had the gig before will shift to “broader strategy issues,” the WSJ notes.)

Nishar is among the elite Google employees honored with the company’s Google Founders Award, considered the highest award within the company. It recognizes “extraordinary entrepreneurial achievement” and comes with a nice stock grant instead of just a trophy.

Nishar had been with Google for five-and-a-half years.

Google

Is Social Media Useful or just Ego-Boost?

Guest Poster — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:04:54 +0000

With the rise of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn comes a rise in a market designed to “teach” companies how to leverage social media sites for business purposes. But aside from marketing initiatives, are these sites really valuable for companies?

Of the various social media sites, the one I’ve seen used the most for non-marketing business uses is LinkedIn. While there are many people who see little to no value to the site, I’ve witnessed companies using the site for recruiting, locating service providers, and seeking business advice. I was hired at The Industry Standard based on working LinkedIn, and yet it’s the one social media site that always seems to be ignored or dismissed. It has the highest CPM rate for advertising of any social media site, and probably will be one left standing in the end.

Facebook and Twitter are probably on par in terms of usefulness for companies. Both can be used to build brand awareness, as well as pitch journalists, announce news in a less formal manner, and reach out to a different audience. Some people have had success with leveraging their contacts on the sites for jobs and partnerships, but the majority of the users seem to use the sites for their intent: socializing.

FriendFeed is the current darling of the tech set, and Duncan himself has been converted to a believer. The problem, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be a justifiable business case for using it, at least in its current incarnation. Those trying to woo the tech A-listers know it’s a necessity to keep up with the in-crowd gossip, but overall, the site has the feel of an upside-down high school cafeteria, with the nerds at the popular kid table and the cheerleaders left to their own devices over on MySpace and Facebook. The few companies or blogs who have set up rooms seem to use them only as one more way to publish a news feed, and even the site’s “recommended” users are, for the most part, empty profiles with newsfeeds but little participation.

Unfortunately, the sites with the most practical uses seem to be overlooked while those that prop up the flip-flopped social structure of tech geek supremacy seem to get the most appearances on the tech blogs. For any single post on the usefulness of LinkedIn, there are 100 about a new design at FriendFeed or an outage on Twitter. When it comes to being a viable site that can be used as a tool (and earn money to boot), odds are the sites that pump up your ego won’t be the ones that survive.

First look at new microblogging service YouAre: Twitter 2.0?

Duncan Riley — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:53:36 +0000

Spanish microblogging service YouAre has moved into private beta after a year in development.

A lot has happened in the microblogging space in the last twelve months, but Blogs Media, the company behind YouAre has maintained a steady as she goes, get it right development approach. The private beta is planned to last anywhere between “several weeks to several months” until such time the Blogs Media time thinks the site is right to launch.

So what does YouAre offer over the growing sea of competitors?

YouAre combines Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin, Del.icio.us and the sites “secret ingredient” (their definition). At the basic level YouAre offers 140 character limited short messaging, complete with user profiles, support for @replies and DMs, and the ability to follow friends. The next layer of YouAre (and that’s the best word I can use to describe the feature sets) is Pownce and Tumblr like. Users can share video or pictures, although notably the site doesn’t offer hosting of either at this stage.

The next layer goes off into an unexpected tangent: LinkedIn style professional bios, including support for schools attended and work experience. Layer four takes us into what they describe as De.licio.us territory, but it’s part FriendFeed; yes, users can import external feeds into YouAre, although at this stage the choices are limited to De.licio.us, Flickr and YouTube.

But wait, there’s more! because YouAre also supports manual geolocation, so you can connect with others within your same area, based on the location based in your profile, or if you were visiting somewhere it’s as hard as placing /country/city after YouAre.com.

So what is it? Well it’s not a cake, or even an onion, despite the many layers. My very first impression is that unlike some of the other services I’ve reviewed lately, YouAre wins on name and aesthetics. It’s a great name, and Blogs Media has really thought about the looks of the site. It’s not OMG this is amazingly gorgeous great, but it’s pleasing to work in.

If I’m forced to label it as something, I (with some hesitation) would perhaps label it Twitter 2.0, or even a more professionally focused version of Twitter. It builds on the key concepts of Twitter, and adds to them in a way that isn’t overly complicated, or in a way that has a polarizing effect in an effort to be different (eg Plurk). Any user of Twitter will be able to sign up to YouAre and feel right at home. Although the various layers of the service sound complicated, in practice it feels like a safe, natural progression in this space.

As mentioned above, I don’t have a date as yet for when YouAre will open up ~~nor do I have any invites yet~~(see below). There’s work to be done, but despite entering late into the space, here’s what I like about YouAre already: these guys are determined on launching this as a fully fledged, working platform:

Right now, our priorities are: launching a desktop widget for Windows and MAC, freeing the API, and optimizing the mobile interface, now that the site works on cell phones and smartphones without javascript support.

Yes, they won’t be launching until all the various parts of the service jigsaw puzzle are in place. In an age of half arsed product launches, isn’t it refreshing to see a company focused on launching a complete package.

Screenshots and YouAre’s spreadsheet below, and I’ll be following YouAre closely as it continues to be developed.

Update: we now have 25 invitations for Inquisitr readers. The first 25 people to email with this Subject: “The Inquisitr Invitations” get in. Also I forgot to add that coming in the next couple of days will be the ability to import contacts from external services, including Gmail and Twitter.

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