Social networks are not just a tool for people to reconnect anymore. With the growing number of people becoming involved with these networks, restaurants feel it is important to start utilizing them for advertising. McDonald’s Vice President of communication, Bill Whitman, believes that using these networks will help improve their marketing campaign while also improving long term branding.  In fact, McDonald’s is serious enough about the virtual world of advertising that they have hired Rick Wion, who is the Director of Social Media. His main duties are to implement digital-communications. Starbucks has taken it to yet another level. Twitter recently released its new marketing tactics to companies. It is now selling spots for a company’s Twitter posts to come up first for a price. Starbucks has bought into this campaign and has now bought spots so if another person is searching for coffee or even mentions going to Starbucks in their “tweet” then Starbucks tweets will pull up at the top of their page. This will increase web traffic to their site and increase their brand. It seems that with the increase in people utilizing these social networks it becomes a growing opportunity for businesses to use these as an opportunity to reach a larger magnitude of people.

http://www.nrn.com/breakingNews.aspx?id=382102