By bbr

by Kelly Googe Lucas, marketing and social media manager

While some have bemoaned (and some smirked at) the divorce of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, there was another equally earthshaking split this weekend. Twitter left LinkedIn. Yes, it’s a sad day in the social media world, leaving many to ask the question “How could this have happened? They seemed so happy together.” This smacks of being a stereotypical mid-life crisis. Twitter’s got the new look, dumped the old flame and I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes screeching up the driveway in a brand new cherry red Porsche.

Both platforms made the announcement on Friday, citing that the split was amicable. Twitter states in their blog announcement that they are creating a more cohesive “core Twitter consumptive experience.” What this means is that users with synced accounts will no longer be able to share Tweets directly from Twitter to LinkedIn. However, if you create a status update on LinkedIn, you can still manually select to share your LinkedIn status to Twitter. Basically, Twitter is willing to receive, but not give. This never makes for a good relationship.

In the LinkedIn blog announcement, they’ve made sure to emphasize that this should not hurt your LinkedIn experience at all. In fact, they go so far as to suggest that you simply do your tweeting via their platform. Smart move, LinkedIn, smart move.

So what does this ultimately mean for you? It means that using the #in hashtag in your tweet will no longer send that tweet to LinkedIn. It means that if you have something you wish to share on both platforms, your options are to manually input it on both platforms, type it into LinkedIn and click the ‘Share on Twitter’ button or use a social media aggregator like HootSuite to schedule your links to all your social media accounts.

While it may be a slight inconvenience, this change could ultimately be a good thing. Many use Twitter for business and networking but many more use it as recreation. Intermingling business networking and social fun is fraught with peril, and this could help clear up some of that confusion. LinkedIn is meant to be a place for professional networking. Yes, it’s okay to share a laugh with colleagues, but as with any type of humor, it’s not always wise to share it in mixed company. I think by eliminating the ability to share directly from Twitter and making LinkedIn and Twitter separate, you create a more distinctly professional picture of yourself and your company.

Do you think the split is a good thing? Is it a sign of more splits to come? I’d love to hear your thoughts.