I took the week of July 4th off for a family vacation, so my apologies for this post on week-old news. In late June, I received the following email from LinkedIn:
What does this mean? Basically, you can no longer have a post that originates on Twitter automatically be shared to your LinkedIn account (Twitter’s decision). But, you can continue to originate a post on LinkedIn and have it shared to your Twitter feed (LinkedIn’s decision).
A big part of effective social media is about sharing content, so strike one against Twitter. LinkedIn’s note to its users is a great PR move, especially when it suggests you originate your message on LinkedIn. Strike two against Twitter. Twitter recently updated their Facebook app, allowing users to post their tweets to Facebook. So Twitter gets a third strike for being hypocritical and inconsistent with their policy.
Are they “out?” Not so fast. My initial reaction to Twitter’s decision was somewhat positive because it will force people to be more strategic with their social media usage. In my very first post, I gave three reasons why you should not auto-synchronize your postings across your social media accounts. Social media postings should be more strategic, taking into account the audience you’re interacting with and the different etiquette and style of the social media platform. Unfortunately, many auto-synchronize out of laziness, poor planning and/or a lack of marketing fundamentals.
Be sure to check out your network updates, if you’re on LinkedIn and haven’t checked it since July 1st. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that the quality of the postings are better. Your network updates should be less cluttered with postings that were appropriate for Twitter but less-so for LinkedIn.
What are your thoughts on Twitter’s policy change? Is this a strikeout or a home-run for social media users?