LinkedIn And Twitter Taking Self-Promotion To The Next Level

The alliance brings together the two seemingly disparate Web sites: Twitter, the fast-growing site with more than 300 million active users posting a constant stream of 140-character "tweets" on what they are doing and thinking; and LinkedIn where some 50 million business professionals post their resumes and develop contact networks.

The two companies will be rolling out the new capabilities over the next several days, according to a blog posting on the LinkedIn site by Allen Blue, Twitter co-founder and vice-president of product strategy.

"Why? Because when you're trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together. Like peanut butter and chocolate!" Blue wrote.

When users set their status on LinkedIn, the changes now can be tweeted as well, amplifying it to the user's Twitter followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing, according to Blue's posting. LinkedIn users can also share ideas, such as an interesting industry-specific article they read, to a wider audience. Those, of course, will be limited to Twitter's 140-character limitation. And LinkedIn users will have the option of sending only selected materials to Twitter.

Twitter users will likewise be able to share the ideas and comments they post as tweets to their LinkedIn contacts as status updates.

LinkedIn members can establish a connection with Twitter through an optional checkbox. Twitter members can share their tweets through LinkedIn using the #li or #in tags.