LinkedIn recently announced a way to allow you to tie your Twitter status updates to your LinkedIn status.  That’s great news!  (Except for those of us who spent hours figuring out the best way to make that happen 6 months ago, of course).

With that capability from LinkedIn, you no longer have to use Ping.fm and a Ping-capable Twitter client (Twhirl ruled for this very reason, and Tweetie for iPhone did as well, but has recently dropped Ping.fm integration in their newest version).
Here is my thoughts on why you would not want to link your Twitter status to LinkedIn:

The audience and messaging is completely different!  The very conversational style of Twitter does not exactly trasnslate to the more static and less-interactive status updates on LinkedIn.  I personally struggled with this for a while before deciding to turn off the old system that I used to achieve this (using Ping.fm).   Many times I didn’t even think about it- but then I would login to LinkedIn and see that my last update was a picture at dinner or something from the previous night.  That wasn’t the kind of content that I wanted people to see on my profile, so I killed it.

This has a lot to do with our discussions in class this week on using Social Media for Business: the importance of maintaining your professionalism on social networks if your goal is to promote/use for your business.

One other thing we covered is the TweetDeck, which recently released an update that solves many of these issues for you.  The latest version (v0.32.0) eases these issues by allowing you to pick and choose which networks you would like to post to:  Multiple Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, Facebook (both personal profiles and pages you administer), and even MySpace.  Very cool – check it out!

I must say that I’m pretty excited about the new iPhone 3.0 software because it delivers some basic functionality that I would have expected from a mobile device, having been a loyal Blackberry user for many years.  Copy/Paste and Search were the top of my list, like most that you’ll read about.

I’m also really stoked about the ability to use the landscape keyboard in email and text screens, that definitley improves the user experience a lot in my book.

Now on to James’ iPhone tip:  have you ever wished you could tether your iPhone to your laptop and use the 3G connection to surf the internet?  I have!  I would probably only use this in the rarest of circumstances, but there has been that one freak occurence where I’m on the road and I just have to get online to check something. Tethering your iPhone will allow you use the phones connection to check email, surf the web- whatever you need.

Apple doesn’t allow this functionality out of the box, and your provider will typically try to charge you an extra fee for this capability.  I know that AT&T did when I wanted to use my Blackberry for tethering.  So- onto the tip already!

I found a way to configure your iPhone for tethering that doesn’t require you to jailbreak your iPhone, and doens’t require you to pay your carrier for the service either.  On your iPhone, go to the iPhone Help Center and you will be able to download a config file to your phone that will enable tethering.  Just follow the instructions- it works like a charm!  Be sure to read the warnings, but from what I can tell- this appears to be a solid way to get online without having to buy a wireless access card and the accompanying $40/month service!

It seems I’ve been talking to people about nothing but Facebook lately. I have had so many inquiries from businesses or entrepreneurs who say something along the lines of “I want to do a site like Facebook, except ours will…” that talking about a new web project with us lately seems to center on little else.

Its exciting that Facebook gave us their Facebook Connect interface which allows us to build online communities that utilize your FB login, as well as all your profile information. So I would ask you: why try to start your own social network right now that just creates another ’silo’ of friends, photos, and infomration. People have too many silos as it is: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, the list goes on and on.  And, it should be mentioned, that people will ultimately grow tired of your silo when they decide not to keep up with so many accounts across so many sites. People are already tired of the silo effect- how many Facebook users do you know that converted from Myspace?  Yeah, that’s what I thought- a lot, and that’s pretty common right now.

Facebook gives us the answer by providing a single login that will work on any site that uses Facebook Connect. So now, instead of building your own social network, you just piggy-back on FB’s unbelievable success. (85% growth in 2008 is not too shabby)

We’ve signed several of these projects lately and that’s a trend that is going to continue, unless I miss my guess. What’s got me excited today is that the good people at the ‘book have continued their movement towards a more socially connected Web and provided Facebook Connect for iPhone. With 30 million iPhones sold, that means that we have another rich and engaging platform that we can now access and interact with using the social network that everyone seems to be a part of these days.

I was talking to the guys at Resolute Games about an idea that I had for an iPhone app that we could then offer to our customers. I’m just dying to find a project where we can develop an iPhone app that will somehow tie into our other Internet marketing efforts on some project or another. Talk about having some potential to engage your audience… iPhones and Facebook seem to be a match made in heaven for time-killing!