Twitter and LinkedIn announced today that they are joining forces in the social network world so that customers can use salient features of both providers. Oh joy !!

I have waxed eloquent in the past on the topic of online social networks and how they can suck the energy right out of you if you’re not careful. In fact it was one such diss of Twitter that solicited a snarky comment from someone suggesting that (gasp) I was closed minded by criticizing Twitter without having given it a try. Gad, I hate it when people get all logical and rational on me.

So dutifully, I plugged in my Twitter account, tweeted and sat back to see what happened. Thankfully, not much. I attracted a few followers, rooted out a few that I’d like to follow and then the inevitable happened … nothing, without having to first log into Twitter to check your tweets. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is largely business oriented, has cool groups you can start and join, and sends you a weekly digest of the things that people in your network are up to. Since it is a business oriented provider, these activities are not usually dance recitals, facelifts, monster truck rallies or bird watchings, and are actually things of interest.

So will this convergence of social networking improve Twitter or drag LinkedIn into the cesspool of nattering chatter? I logged into LinkedIn today to accept a request to join my network and there it was … a request to tweet something. I started doing it and was asked for my Twitter login info when I flinched.

Here’s the bottom line to me … I don’t have a ton of discretionary time, and I suspect that you don’t either. Worse for me, I am easily distracted and find WAY too many diversions to keep me from high value tasks and work assignments. I don’t use Facebook or MySpace largely because I don’t need the “social” side of social networking, and secondarily because I don’t want the added distraction.

So I MAY choose to activate my LinkedIn tweets, but I’ll give it some time before I do. I have several deadlines and road trips on my plate for the rest of the year and I hope this all sorts itself out by the New Year.

Until then … simplify, simplify, simplify.

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Personal, Technology.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.