Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Using Social Media to Communicate with Customers

Small business are turning to social media to promote their company's products and services.

With reduced marketing budgets, increased competition and a global economic downtown, companies are discovering that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, provide a quick and free way of promoting their products to a large global audience. 

Twitter, which allows users to post Tweets of up to 140 characters, is currently developing products to sell to business users, including software to verify accounts and analyse traffic to Twitter account holders' profiles.  It  recently launched Twitter 101, which includes advice for new users along with case studies, describing how companies of all scales and in various sectors have used the site to grow their business.

Social media is coming of age too and benefiting as a results of this surge of interest.  Facebook, which has 300 million users worldwide has announced it had become cash-flow positive.  Its business services include special pages and the option to buy advertising to show to users who like similar companies.

Friends Reunited Eyes Up Over-50s Dating Service

DC Thomson, the new owner of Friends Reunited has announced it is planning to launch an over-50s dating service to appeal to users of its genealogy business Find My Past.

This is good news for its 60 FR staff who are likely to keep their jobs now.

DC Thomson acquired Friends Reunited for £25m from ITV yesterday.  It has been reported they approached the Office of Fair Trading in a bid to gain clearance for the deal, which will see two of the three biggest online subscription genealogy businesses in the UK merge.