Difference Between Twitter and LinkedIn (With Table) 

Nowadays, a bulk of marketing for services and products by several brands and businesses takes place on the social media platform. Meetup Pro, SlideShare, Tumblr, Pinterest, and several others are the influential platforms out there. On these platforms, a lot of people use strategies of social media marketing to promote their services and products.  

Below Twitter and LinkedIn are highlighted as the competition is tough between them, and to supplement social media marketing, people use extra services. These consist of buying followers to artificially boost the stats of the business page. In this article, the chief aim is on differentiating Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Twitter vs LinkedIn  

The main difference between Twitter and LinkedIn is their relationship building. A relationship can be built up very quickly as Twitter allows one to follow anyone. That’s why it is very accessible for anyone to make contact. On the other hand, LinkedIn is quite formal, and thus, to connect with someone you must know the person or be a member of the same group. 

Twitter is a microblogging and social networking online service that lets users receive and send text-based messages or posts. Twitter is also described as Internet SMS due to its unmatched popularity. Users can post their tweets after the online signup process by Twitter-compatible devices. 

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed particularly for the business community. The site’s goal is to allow registered members to document and establish networks of people they trust and know professionally. Microsoft is the parent of this site. 

Comparison Table Between Twitter and LinkedIn 

Parameters of Comparison

Twitter

LinkedIn

Founded

On March 21, 2006

On May 5, 2003

Type of business

Public

Subsidiary

Headquarters

San Francisco, California, U.S.

Sunnyvale, California, U.S.

Type of site

Social networking service and news

Professional network service

Key people

Ned Segal (CFO), Bret Taylor (Chair), and Parag Aggarwal (CEO)

Steve Sordello (CFO), Melissa Selcher (CMO), Raghu Hiremagular (CTO), Jeff Weiner (Executive chairman)

What is Twitter? 

On Twitter, unregistered users can also read those tweets which are publicly available. But registered users can retweet, like, and post to their tweets. Tweets were originally restricted to characters of 140, but for non-CJK languages, the limit was doubled to 280.  

For most accounts, video and audio tweets remain limited to 140 seconds. It is mainly written in the language of Scala, Java, Ruby, and JavaScript. The native clients of Twitter are on Microsoft Windows, iOS, Windows Phone, Web, macOS, and Android.  

In 2013, Twitter was among the ten most-visited websites and also has been referred to as the “the SMS of the Internet.” The vast majority of tweets in practice are written by a minority of users. It had monthly active users of more than 330 million as of Q1 2019.  

Twitter messages are generally public, but through “direct messages” users can also send private ones. Twitter mainly displays no advertising, while advertisers can target users based on tweet history and might quote tweets in ads directed particularly to the user. 

What is LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn is an American employment-oriented and business online service that operates through mobile apps and websites. The primary usage of this platform is for career development and professional networking and allows employees to post jobs and job seekers to post their CVs.  

From over 200 countries as well as territories, it has 774+ million registered members as of September 2021. It allows members to create profiles and also connect in a social network online. It might represent the professional relationship of the real world.  

Members of LinkedIn can invite anyone whether the member is existing on LinkedIn or not to become a connection. It can also be used to join groups, public job postings, organize offline events, write articles, post videos and photos, and many more.  

Data in a massive amount from LinkedIn allow machine learning researchers and scientists to extract insights and also build product features. For instance, this data helps to shape deception patterns in resumes. Findings suggested that people generally lie about their hobbies rather than on online resumes their work experience. 

Main Differences Between Twitter and LinkedIn 

  1. Periscope and Vine are only two of the subsidiaries of Twitter. On the other hand, the subsidiaries of LinkedIn are Connectifier, LinkedIn Learning, Glint, and Drawbridge.  
  2. Although tweets are only visible for a moment and are permanently searchable. If you have a busy stream, then it is hard to track back to the conversation. In contrast, LinkedIn wins for longevity as in most cases people get a LinkedIn answer even after 24 hours.  
  3. Twitter allows saying things in only 140 characters or less. This causes jargon and abbreviation and shortened links, while this can be easy to misunderstand. Meanwhile, LinkedIn allows to points elaboration and makes it easy to expand related to the meaning behind sending messages.  
  4. Twitter allows people to see who you are so that they like, know, and trust you. On the flip side, LinkedIn is generally about professionalism. This can be shown through providing skills and experience for anyone to read.  
  5. It is very accessible for anyone to make contact through Twitter. A relationship can be built up very quickly as it allows one to follow anyone. On contrary, LinkedIn is quite formal as to connect you must know the person or be a member of the same group. 

Conclusion 

It can be concluded that both Twitter and LinkedIn use extra services like buying followers to artificially boost the stats of business pages and leads to supplement social media marketing.  Twitter is a kind of news and social networking service site. On contrary, LinkedIn is a kind of professional network service site.  

When it comes to origin, Twitter’s origin can be traced to March 21, 2006, when it was founded by Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, and Evan Williams. On the other hand, the origin of LinkedIn can be traced to May 5, 2003, when it was founded by Eric Ly, Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, and Jean-Luc Vaillant. Twitter is a public kind of business. On contrary, LinkedIn is a subsidiary kind of business. 

References 

  1. https://www.igi-global.com/pdf.aspx?tid%3D105658%26ptid%3D71575%26ctid%3D17%26t%3Dtwitter%3A+social+communication+in+the+twitter+age
  2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0163443712468605