Earlier in April the SEC released a report approving social media as an appropriate means for communicating with investors. And while many companies are still figuring out exactly what social media means to their investor communities, one company is jumping in head first.
Online real estate database Zillow has long embraced social media as a platform for customer engagement, and now they’re taking things a step further with plans to field quarterly earnings call questions directly from Facebook and Twitter. According to a blog post announcing the plan, Zillow investors “can connect with Zillow by tweeting questions to @zillow and using the hashtag #ZEarnings, or by posting a question to our Facebook page.” Questions can still be asked the traditional way, and the answers will be provided on the call itself.
While Zillow is the first to dive head on into the SEC’s new social media guidelines, other companies are dipping their toes in the water. In its first quarter earnings report for 2013, General Electric encouraged investors to visit their Facebook and Twitter pages for “a significant amount of information about GE, including financial and other information.”
