This is an excerpt from the Wildfire whitepaper, "Putting the 'Social' Into Social Media" which is available for download. The report examines the top 50 companies in the 2009 Deloitte Fast Tech; a list of the fastest growing technology companies in the UK. The list is a combination of small and large companies from all corners of the technology industry – both B2B and B2C - united by impressive growth figures in the last year.

43% of brands on Twitter had never replied to a tweet
But technology brands were generally not using Twitter to be social. The majority were either tweeting company news (46%) or industry insights (51%). Only 3% of the tweets were retweets, and replies represented just 12% of the total number of tweets. Underlining all of this, a shocking 43% of brands with a Twitter account had never replied to a tweet! Tech companies are using Twitter to broadcast messages, but they are not engaging with their stakeholders and are therefore missing an opportunity to build community and influence. Twitter itself makes no secret of its desire to help brands adopt the service, with the continued rumours of a Twitter Corporate service coming soon and the recent addition of the Sponsored Tweets advertising scheme.

Is this surprising to you? How many tech companies do you know that actually respond to Tweets from customers? We'd like to hear your thoughts.