Twitter and Linkedin have teamed up to give Linkedin users the ability to update the status of both. I have been waiting for this some time now, as I end up taking my tweets and bringing them over to my Linkedin status updates.

Twitter, according to Duct Tape Marketing, is being positioned as the “central content distribution hub for businesses” and I find myself agreeing with this completely. Twitter is the ultimate broadcasting tool, but not everyone is on it. Linkedin still has more users and an essentially under-used function in the status update area. This new feature will hopefully reconcile the two and foster more openness in Linkedin, which it needs to stay relevant in social media.

Indeed, the new Twitter application will allow me to more easily and quickly share great information with my Linkedin network, which does tend to differ from my Twitter followers. I love being able to communicate across all these channels and the less hassle it takes in doing this, the easier it will be for people to adopt. I definitely foresee Twitter gettting a surge of new users from this feature.

Linkedin stands to benefit too, as it finds its way in the ever-altering social media space. Not long ago, it seemed Linkedin was trying to become more closed and enter into more of a “paid subscription” service. This new adventure with Twitter seems to be an extremely wise move in the other direction. I’m happy to see it.

Now, here’s how to use the new feature in Linkedin. Make sure you check the box to only send out tweets with the #in that you enter. This is a must-have for you: you need to control your professional brand on Linkedin and Twitter conversations can get casual, fast.

Your next step is to create your tweets with the #in hashtag and leave the hashtag off of tweets that you don’t want to go to your Linkedin status. See below as an example from my Twitter account:

You can see that some of these updates went to Linkedin with the #in hashtag but one did not because I did not think it would add value to my Linkedin network in the same it would to my Twitter network.

Try it out: I think this is a great application, but make sure you are putting out appropriate information to your respective networks and followers. With more openness in the online space comes more responsibility for brands to manage as best they can the information and content they put into the space.