With the emergence of new online services such as Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc … can a company really get by without an official website? The short answer is, it depends. It really gets back at the core question of what do you really want to do on the internet? Are you looking to distribute information? Sell things? Grow your supplier network? Interact with customers?

A good example would be bands and their use of MySpace profile pages. An up and coming band is looking to do two main things, get their music out there and grow their fan base. MySpace does an excellent job of this by offering an easy to use interface to edit your profile page and upload songs. The main draw is that bands will be instantly part of a community of millions and can have an attractive looking “website” in just a few short hours. MySpace also offers custom URLs so it is easy to remember and easy to distribute to your fans.

There are a number of other reasons why bands choose this route so you ask why don’t I just create a page for my business? Because of the crowd using MySpace. Although the millions of high school students and younger are exactly what a growing band needs, they may not be interested in your company and you may not want your company associated with them either. For a more sophisticated crowd you can try Facebook, but then again, it all depends on what you are looking to do online and who you are looking to engage.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. will tell the same story, they have a great set of tools for doing a certain activity online, you just have to decide if it is what will grow your brand best. Keep in mind that unattended Facebook pages will cause you more harm then good in the long run. So in short, yes, you can be very successful just using the social tools mentioned above as long as you use them the right way.

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