If you hang out on LinkedIn, you may have noticed the dusty status box on your profile page. If you hang out on-line, you know what a status box is for. My sense of the LinkedIn status box is that it has been a cute little novelty on the site: some take advantage of it from time to time but most seem to ignore its existence. Sort of like ignoring the unpacked boxes from your move two years ago.

That may all change overnight. LinkedIn has announced integration of its cute little status boxes with Twitter’s power status updating service. Over the next 24 hours, LinkedIn will roll out to users the ability to automatically update Twitter with LinkedIn status updates and vice versa, with the use of a hashtag, much like the #fb tag. The LinkedIn tag is #in or li.

A nice feature is that you will be able to set up the cross-posting to send all or selected tweets. Not sure my business contacts want to hear what I had for breakfast yesterday. LinkedIn is also permitting users to show their tweet stream on their LinkedIn profile as well.

Facebook integration also may be in LinkedIn’s future, as well as URL shortening of LinkedIn updates to fit within the infamous 140 character Twitter limit (that makes sense).

I think this is the right move for LinkedIn. My historical complaint regarding the site is that it is, well, boring. There is plenty of business in the questions and group commentary, but the flow in those areas is slow, too slow for today’s real time world. Furthermore, there is little opportunity on LinkedIn to develop your “personality”. The modern Web in general and social networking in particular demand that the experience be fun, ever-changing and informative. Twitter integration goes far towards improving LinkedIn’s deficiencies in this regard.

Will you integrate your Twitter stream with your LinkedIn updates? Enquiring minds want to know!