UK's leading tech firms fail to grasp Twitter potential

Stephen Beynon, Ntl:Telewest Business's managing director, said: "There is no longer any excuse for not embracing social networks to share news, recruit employees and even monitor and respond to users who are praising or criticising them.

"Twitter has been successfully used as a network building tool by businesses such as Mozilla and Sun Microsystems, so there is  template that British businesses can apply to make it work for them.

"The risk in not using Twitter is that these companies will fall behind transatlantic competitors."

Conversely, according to research published last week by mobile operator O2, the UK's smaller businesses are more Twitter-savvy than their larger counterparts -- 10% of small businesses said they had saved up to £5,000 by using Twitter; while a third had saved more than £1,000.

The report estimated that 700,000 small firms are using the service as a business tool -- of the 500 companies polled, 17% said they were already using Twitter and 25% said they had been persuaded to sign up in the last four weeks.

Last month it transpired that Twitter is embarking on plans to charge brands to use its site. The news was met with outrage by the marketing community, which unsurprisingly would rather the service remained free.