When I installed the LinkedIn iPhone App last night, the first thing that struck me was the focus on the “LinkedIn Status”… and how almost every status update in my network read:

“… Is testing the LinkedIn App”

Is that useful? And when are there so many status feeds and updates that the general concept of ‘status’ becomes meaningless? I’d argue it’s already happened. I sense that Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are having trouble figuring out how to play together vs. compete together.

How will LinkedIn now play in the status world? I imagine they’ll find out pretty quickly that it will be tough to gather enough status alerts to make their network feeds useful. LinkedIn is not the community (or mindset) that has people actively updating their lives. It is, however, a community that wants to alert their networks of other things: job openings, business questions / needs, etc. I would argue that these are not statuses though… and I would argue a step further that alerts like “… is testing the LinkedIn App” actually degrades the LinkedIn experience – which compared to the other status-based networks, is typically very clean and focused.

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