Linkedin: SIGNAL- Twitter meets your boss.

LinkedIn has launched (in Beta) a service that combines LinkedIn status updates and twitter tweets in a single, sortable (by your professional network) stream.

Handy for seeing the volume of links being shared, which are the most popular, who are the influencers in your network, and other goodies, Signal seams like a good idea.

There's a small part that worries me: People (most people) have a certain expectation about how often they visit LinkedIn, let alone update their status.  Many people put up a profile, and only go back when they have to confirm a connection request or start looking for a job.  We're sort of trained into thinking that LinkedIn is for our professional network, Facebook is our personal or social network, and Twitter is our meet new people/talk to strangers/anyone is listening--network.  They're very different.  You may tweet once an hour, then spend a few minutes on Facebook at night, and once a week pop over to LinkedIn.  They all have very different interaction profiles for the user.

So then-- why take on this real-time stream?

Your professional network, including recruiters who are looking to snap up talent, are looking for great people, and you have to stand out.  If you're posting links and comments related to your field, commenting or liking stuff from your network, or generally

, that goes a long way to differentiate you from the other 1000 schlubs looking for a job that just sent in a resume.  This is about getting noticed, getting recognized, and getting heard-- as well as the reciprocal-- noticing/listening/recognizing others.

If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, please read this other post of mine...