On June 29, 2012, Twitter cut ties with LinkedIn, deciding to no longer partner with the business-networking site to sync updates from one site to the other. The end of the partnership, which began in 2009, means that LinkedIn users can still create updates on the site and click a button to share to Twitter as well, but the the reverse is no longer possible.
With the cessation of the partnership, Facebook has now become the destination for referrals from LinkedIn, with Says Brendan Irvine-Broque:
“The spike happened because without Twitter, there is now a significantly lower volume of content in the LinkedIn News Feed, and therefore less competition for clicks and attention. So any non-Twitter content (including links to Facebook Pages and Page Posts) is performing much better than before.” Source
Referral traffic jumped by 1000% in July, compared to any single previous month, according to Irvine-Broque. The data assessed how much traffic LinkedIn sent to more than 500 Facebook pages that had between 100,000 and 1,000,000 fans. Following the astounding increase from LinkedIn, the social network now drives more referral traffic to Facebook Pages than Google and Bing combined.
LinkedIn’s importance cannot be overstated, but even we are surprised by the heavyweight punch its referral traffic wields. Will Twitter come to regret this decision? Let us know in the comments and on on our own Twitter page!
