Digital media adviser and investor Peter Read has set up a
marketing agency to help businesses sell themselves on the
increasingly popular microblogging and social networking site
Twitter.
Twitter has
grown by more than 3,000% in the past year, according to
figures from internet monitoring site Hitwise.
Read, who has been involved with several start-ups including
Skype has assembled a team of advisers to found Twitter Partners
that launches today, according to the
Financial Times.
The Twitter Partners team include Lastminute.com founders Brent
Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, Index Ventures partner Saul Klein and
Yahoo's former European vice-president Toby Coppel.
Read's marketing firm will provide consulting, software tools
and services to its clients, which already include Virgin Media and
Universal Pictures.
Services will include things such as "buzz-monitoring" to enable
companies to monitor Twitter to see what users are saying about
their products and services.
According to read, harnessing Twitter has to be strategic
because Twitter does not sell advertising backed by an in-house
marketing department.
US banks are already using Twitter as a way of
staying in touch with customers, potential customers and the
general public.
Analysts have predicted that
integrating customer relationship management with Twitter will
be increasingly important to help businesses improve profitability
during the economic slowdown.
Twitter is also increasingly proving to be a valuable way to
co-ordinate group activities, including protests at
last week's G20 meetings in London.