Bank of America has become the latest financial institution to tap micro-blogging site Twitter, launching a feed to provide advice and help to customers.
The feed is manned by BofA customer relations specialist David Knapp, who customers can tweet if they have problems with their accounts or general questions.
On its Future Banking blog, BofA's Holly Hastings says the new feed is for "listening and responding" to customers.
"So we are entering a new territory. A place that is not familiar to many in financial services - but a place with tremendous opportunity," says Hastings.
BofA is the latest financial institution to harness Twitter. Wachovia has been using the service to communicate with customers since last August and now has over 1000 followers.
However, others have been less successful. Wells Fargo set up a Twitter account back in 2007 but has only posted four tweets, the most recent of which says "we're not using Twitter actively yet". Washington Mutual dumped its account shortly after setting it up.
Whilst banks have had mixed results with Twitter, personal finance sites like Wesabe and Mint have made a more concerted effort to take advantage of the technology. Wesabe began Tweeting in 2007 and last year started to let customers add transactions to their accounts through the site.
BofA's Future Banking blog is included in Finextra's recently introduced roundup of the best of the blogosphere.