Twitter vs. LinkedIn: Connecting Desktop & Mobile Usage

Trying to get your users to adopt your mobile app and take you with them when they're not in front of the computer? As Twitter's usage is increasing exponentially they are trying to get as many users on their mobile platforms.

• From Mar 2010 to Feb 2011, Twitter has seen a 280% increase in the number of average tweets per day.
• From Jan 2010 to Jan 2011, Twitter's mobile users have increase 182% - to 26 million.
• On average, there are 460,000 new accounts created on Twitter every day.

They have been running this screen upon logout on their website:

This screen shows all of the mobile platforms that they support and lets you select your device to download the app. If you selected Android, this is screen you see:

Each screen offers a few easy ways to connect the user from desktop to the mobile device.  A spot for you to input your email address so they can send you a link to download from your mobile device.  But, I think my favorite feature of this page is the usage of the QR Code. This is probably the one application of a QR Code 'on-the-screen' that makes sense to me. The users scan the QR Code right from the desktop and they're taken right to the download option on their device.

LinkedIn has a very similar strategy, but they don't use the QR Code and they insert an extra screen which creates an extra step for users. 

I love the copy on this first screen though: "Going Places? Take LinkedIn with you."  It's clever and works on two levels.

On the second page, they then show you the devices...with continued reference to the "going places" line.

The download page is rather simple and connects directly to the android store and offers instructions for manual downloading of the app.  

Both strategies are clean and simple - but I prefer Twitter's fewer screens and usage of QR Codes.