LinkedIn and Twitter go together like peanut butter and chocolate, says Stone

Business and professional networking site LinkedIn has linked with Twitter in a partnership that will allow the two to cross-file to each other’s services by checking a box on either site.

Allen Blue, a co-founder of Twitter who is its vice president of product strategy, said LinkedIn members would be able to automatically repost recent Twitter messages if they wanted.

When LinkedIn users set their status on LinkedIn, they can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to all of their followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when users tweet, they can send that message to their LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

LinkedIn members can also chose to post certain tweets on their LinkedIn profiles, so an executive can separate tweets about lunch from important product announcements.

Blue added that users will have the option of sending only selected materials to Twitter.

In addition to the obvious advantage of increasing the audience for either tweets or LinkedIn information there were two other advantages to the new system.

Twitter “wants to take advantage of the strong identity in LinkedIn to make those professional tweeters more successful”.
LinkedIn and Twitter said they would roll out the new services “gradually over the next couple of days.”

In an online video with LinkedIn chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the partnership was like “bringing peanut butter and the chocolate together to make the perfect combination.”

But more than just creating a virtual Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, the deal hints at Twitter’s future business strategy, especially with more companies discovering how social networking is evolving into an important communications link for employees and customers.

“It is the integration of the business side of the tweets and Twitter with the business ecosystem of LinkedIn that make the two work together,” Hoffman said in the video.

“The business use case of Twitter is turning out to be very important,” Stone said. He also spoke about “putting a little Twitter in everything.”