Fortune 500 focusing more on Twitter

A recent yearly repost released by the Center for Marketing Research at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth “The Fortune 500 and Social Media” says that America’s biggest corporations have dramatically increased their participation in twitter (~approximately two times).

Today, three out of five Fortune 500 companies in US have an active Twitter account, compared to 1/3 in year 2009. This number is even more than the numbers that have an active Facebook account, which is about 56%.

Today, 60% of Fortune 500 is micro blogging

More than a third of the companies with Twitter accounts frequently responded to consumers with @ replies or retweets within a short period of time, making a solid effort to engage the 26 million US adults use Twitter at least monthly.

Although the taken as a whole usage of Twitter by the Fortune 500 increased, so did its reach all through the ranks of the list. Last year, practically 40% of those companies with an account were in the top 100. But, by 2010, that had dropped to 25%, & companies in the middle of the pack made up a bigger share of Twitter users.

The repost also says that; the industry’s most powerfully represented among Fortune 500 Twitter accounts were specialty retail (23 companies); drug, food, and CPG (22); and insurance (20). And these were also the top three industries to have an active Facebook account.

“America’s economy and to a large extent the world economy is driven by these large & leading companies,” said the report. “Their eagerness to network more transparently via these new technologies with their stakeholders is apparent. It will be very fascinating to observe as they get bigger their embracing of social media tools and bond with their constituents in considerably new ways.”