Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Bonaire Joins Social Networks Facebook and Twitter

The North American office of the Tourism Corporation Bonaire has incorporated social media tools with the launch of its new interactive fan pages on top social network web sites, Facebook and Twitter.  Bonaire’s Facebook and Twitter pages were created to support Bonaire Dive Into Summer 2009, which is a part of the Celebration of Bonaire’s Commitment to Conservation Program. 

The pages feature links to Bonaire Dive Into Summer and Celebrating Bonaire’s Commitment to Conservation calendars of events, links to the TCB web site, various island images, and more. The sites will encourage Facebook and Twitter users to follow the island’s updates on Twitter and invite them to add Bonaire to their fan page on Facebook, which will then provide access to the features and information available on their page.

Bonaire already has over 230 followers on Twitter and over 300 fans on Facebook. The island will continue to update followers and fans with news on the activities surrounding Bonaire Dive Into Summer, Celebration of the Parks, and relevant news on the island, etc. The pages are targeting the audiences of scuba divers, travel partners, journalists, sustainable tourism businesses, and other Caribbean partners.

While Facebook started out as a service for university students, at this moment almost one third of its global audience is aged 35-49 years of age and almost one quarter is over 50 years old.  Facebook boasts more than 175 million active users as of February 2008, with more than 45 million active users in the US alone and more than 3.5 million active users becoming fans of pages each day.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as “tweets.” Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them. Twitter is the third most used social network and has 55 million visits per month.

Visit Bonaire’s Facebook page by clicking here, or the Twitter page by clicking here. (Source:  TCB-NY)