All A-Twitter

>>Gail Lamarche is being followed, and she’s not at all worried about it. In fact, she encourages such attention by sharing favorite quotes, interesting news stories and information about Henderson, Franklin, Starnes & Holt—the Fort Myers law firm where she’s director of marketing—with her 600-plus followers.

Lamarche is among millions of people who have created accounts on Twitter, a social-networking site through which users send short messages called "tweets." According to the Web site www.tweetrush.com, more than 1 million tweets were sent each day from Feb. 25 to March 3, for everything from branding businesses to keeping in touch with friends.

Since Lamarche joined Twitter in January, she’s encouraged others at Henderson Franklin to start tweeting as well, and she says the law firm has benefited. "We’ve had cases referred to us from Texas and California," she says, "and we’ve had probably around a 50 percent increase in Web traffic. It’s just been amazing. It expands our network, from potential clients to referral sources, within seconds."

Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are being used by everyone from middle schoolers to baby boomers. According to eMarketer, which provides research and analysis on digital marketing and media, 79.5 million U.S. Internet users visited social networking sites at least once a month in 2008, and that number will increase by about 44 percent to nearly 115 million by 2013.

As a result, businesses are using the sites as tools to retain customers, deal with service issues and promote themselves. Gartner Inc., an information technology research company, predicts that by 2010, more than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will be using online communities for customer relationship purposes. Airline JetBlue, for example, uses Twitter to send out delay and cancellation information as well travel tips and fare sales.