Twitter, LinkedIn Cut Deal - We're Still Waiting for the Big Announcement
Twitter, LinkedIn Cut Deal - We're Still Waiting for the Big Announcement
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / November 9, 2009 9:00 PM / 23 Comments
Twitter and LinkedIn are announcing a deal tonight that will allow LinkedIn users to publish status updates to their Twitter profiles and pull in some or all Twitter updates to their LinkedIn accounts.
Wait a minute...the two social media companies with some of the most valuable, interesting data on the web made a deal and what do we get? Spammy Twitter streams clouding up our LinkedIn feeds and an occasional uptight Tweet on Twitter that was born inside LinkedIn? We're still waiting for the meaty announcements everyone says are coming someday soon - that Twitter and LinkedIn are open for business.
I don't mean to be too grouchy, but this looks like just one more sweetheart Silicon Valley deal that has limited imagination and represents a lost opportunity for the kind of innovation everyone expects these kinds of companies to drive.
In the announcement video recorded by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman and Twitter's Biz Stone, both talked about how Twitter is great for business. What did they mean, though? They meant it's a marketing platform, a way to get your message out further, etc. If you have something you want to say to everyone on LinkedIn, why not say it on Twitter too?But is business just about broadcasting your marketing message? What about the listening part of doing business, thoughtful analysis, responding to actionable information and market conditions? Conversations with your customers and business partners?
Twitter is arguably better for listening than it is for broadcast and conversion of marketing messages. This kind of cross-posting deal falls short of the huge potential latent in the data both of these companies control and instead appeals to the craven broadcast-model of marketing. Challenging that broadcast-model is where many people believe social media derives its meaning.
What could this look like? It could look like an option to view the employer and job title of anyone you see on Twitter or through a 3rd party Twitter interface. It could look like Twitter opening up its fire hose for unfettered 3rd party analysis and development - then you'd see social graph and content analysis done that gave a big boost to the User Experience on LinkedIn. ("This LinkedIn user has been conversing with friends on Twitter who were talking about 'mobile,' 'Wisconsin' and 'gaming' over the last 2 weeks.")
Whatever the case may be, both occupational data (LinkedIn) and social messaging data (Twitter) are rich green fields for mashups and analysis - but these two companies are holding back the tide of innovation by refusing to offer a clear path to their data by outside partners.
LinkedIn partners with next to no one. Only large, established organizations like Business Week, the New York Times and now Twitter get access to LinkedIn data. Other services all around the web will tell you stories about reaching out to LinkedIn for API access and getting the cold shoulder.
We wrote about this concern three weeks ago ("LinkedIn Hits 50 Million Users; Still a Roach Motel") and the company told us then and today that big changes are coming to its API soon. That's great. That's something to look forward to, if cautiously. We're years into the LinkedIn Platform today and there's only a select few partners doing anything there so far.
Likewise, Twitter is fabulously open with its data in some ways (on a per-item basis) - but it's leaving a substantial number of outside developers frustrated because they can't get their hands on the full feed of Twitter data (the fire hose) to analyze. Startup companies that do appear to have relationships with Twitter tell us things like "We won't describe our relationship with Twitter to you and neither will anyone else who has one." That's charming. It's unclear whether anyone but Google and Bing have access to all the Twitter data.
Twitter investor and real-time web guru John Borthwick told us in another conversation today that he believes Twitter is just in its early days as a company, that there's nothing mysterious going on. "I'm hoping there will be a click-thru EULA [End User Licensing Agreement] to the firehose [someday]," he wrote. (Emphasis added.)
That sounds good.
So everybody's working on the wide-open web that so many of us want to see? Standards and APIs and open platforms to facilitate a new era of innovation are right around the corner?
Sounds great. For now though what we get is a little cross-network message broadcasting. Hopefully it's just the beginning.
Posted inAnalysis, Messaging Services and tagged with
linkedin, twitter
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LinkedIn is so damn frustrating with their data. Two years of automated rejection letters for API access. If you aren't having coffee with Reid, you aren't getting access.
Then there's the "sweetheart" deals that remind us how the Suggested User List was born.
Anyway, I suppose it's cool that the platforms will talk, but outside of broadcasting, I can't see a use for it. Personally, I don't want either stream co-mingling. My LinkedIn profile wears a suit, perfect grammar and a smile, my Twitter stream has tattoos, strong opinions and occasionally curses. Opt-in only please!
Let's hope LinkedIn has bigger plans to appeal to the developer network.
Posted by: Justyn Howard
This could be as bad as AOL connecting to usenet.
At least we know that something better will be created in response.
Posted by: Kurt Sussman
This deal will probably only be good for 1-way corp tweets (read that not real social networking)
Posted by: Alan Bleiweiss
Nice mix: a skeptical eye on the deal, with a well-articulated ideal for what the Web should be.
I agree with Justyn, I like that there is/was no cross-pollination of streams. Of course, I do have separate professional and personal Twitter accounts, which makes it easier to keep the work-a-day and party personas separate.
Posted by: Yong C. Lee
Accurately posed questions regarding intent, outcomes & fear of loss of real innovation. Agree w/all major points--stay aggressive.
Posted by: CarolAckerman | November 9, 2009 9:50 PM
Thanks for the supportive comments, folks. I know I'm hoping for the best from all this! I love the internet.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
Watch out gentle Tweeters, LinkedIn has some of the most onerous and rapacious user agreement terms of any online service "now known or in the future discovered"...
Posted by: Alastair Jamieson
Nice redux of the essential facts + issues in play here.
So, Twitter & LinkedIn are betrothed. But, shall we call the offspring TwinkedIn...or Litter?
Posted by: Michael J. Russell
What a curmudgeon you seem even if you are right.
Posted by: Bob Boynton
Finally I will not feel so bad about leaving the LinkedIn status without updates for months - after all, LinkedIn is not the destination I visit daily (unlike Twitter). So at least now I will actually say something on LinkedIn regularly - even if it's not officially on LinkedIn.
Posted by: clavier | November 9, 2009 10:51 PM
This post can apply to any partnering with Twitter. Don't expect anything deep from only 140 characters.
Posted by: BLOGBloke | November 9, 2009 11:53 PM
This will change the reputation of Linkedin and I dont know that it will be positive or negative. However Twitter will be in better.
Posted by: facebook applicaitons | November 10, 2009 12:34 AM
I have been posting my tweets to LI for some time and from a business point of view its been very beneficial. Indeed often I get more click-throughs from the LI post of a link than the open twitter world, so for me its win/ win.
What the article misses is the duality of the relationship... LI to push and twitter to listen. The innovation is not necessarily in the technology, but the applications we the users put this technology to. Having some synergy between platforms can only reinforce the validity of the tool/ channel. Isolation we have seen is not sustainable in the long term.
For me a sustainable approach to twitter is a marketing/ communications usage rather than a social network - or in the least it is the 'glue' between social networking networks providing the 'here and now' connection.
LI has been very successful, but not in the way of many of the social networking sites. For many LI is not a daily visit, however for those of us involved in the LI groups it is a valuable communication channel which certainly is growing from strength to strength.
Mike
http://twitter.com/rapidbi
Posted by: Mike | November 10, 2009 1:53 AM
I agree. If this is the extent of the tie-up, it shows a huge lack of imagination.
Posted by: Kenny | November 10, 2009 2:42 AM
I suppose it's cool that the platforms will talk, but outside of broadcasting, I can't see a use for it. Personally, I don't want either stream co-mingling. My LinkedIn profile wears a suit, perfect grammar and a smile, my Twitter stream has tattoos, strong opinions and occasionally curses.
Posted by: Andre Stegplatten | November 10, 2009 3:03 AM
It would be nice to be able to communicate through Twitter with LinkedIn personalities IMHO:
it would open up LinkedIn to some degree if everyone on Twitter would be able to send a message to a LinkedIn member.
Anyway, it's one more Twictory... Twitter is the XXI Century's Who's Who.
Posted by: jansegers | November 10, 2009 4:53 AM
It all looks like we're heading for more spam in Linkedin. All that spam from Twitter is now going to be redirected to Linkedin.
Posted by: Ahmad Barirani | November 10, 2009 6:13 AM
LinkedIn's offered a great way to "listen in" on Twitter for the past year with its Company Buzz application: http://bit.ly/UQ3pL -- this is the next step in making those conversations bi-directional.
Posted by: Frank Chu | November 10, 2009 6:22 AM
Is this news coming out right now, because Linkedin has been getting a lot of press lately for botching a lot of their features, like company profile page highlighted on Techcrunch.
BTW. When is the last time anyone actually checked their Linkedin profile? Me, 3 months ago. It is not a destination site. It is like HI5 or Friendster implementing Twitter widget to their network. No one cares.
Posted by: Jason B | November 10, 2009 7:38 AM
For Twitter, doesn't this effectively mean 10s of millions of new, business-oriented, high-income, users? Seems obvious to me from their point of view. Who cares if it's useful? They're "building a user base before making profits" right?
Posted by: Mark Drapeau | November 10, 2009 8:46 AM
I'm not mixing the two!
Posted by: Rex
| November 10, 2009 8:51 AM
net net: makes it less easy for anyone to be other than who they are (or who they've been lately).
I hope it pushes us toward de-professionalization and re-humanization, and not the reverse.
Remember when blogging was just a bunch of people (who happened to work somewhere) talking? And then we worked together sometimes as the years went by? I'm thinking we're circling back around to that. Seeing the guy you know as a serious suit on LinkedIn tweet about a leaky bath tub or pissy neighbor could be an important re-integration, small as it may seem.
Posted by: jeneane | November 10, 2009 8:55 AM
Enjoyed the analysis here. I'm also finding mixed reactions to the Linkedin Twitter alliance through TipTop's real-time semantic search engine at
http://www.feeltiptop.com/Twitter%20Linkedin/.
Posted by: Gregory
| November 10, 2009 11:09 AM
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