Look who is following the new corporate Tweeters

Welcome, the corporate tweeters, company representatives on Twitter whose job it is to tell the world what the business is up to in 140 characters or less. In the US they come as standard, but now the UK, and especially London, is catching on.

The Globe Theatre is there, as is online fashion store ASOS.com, and tweetalondoncab, London cabbies whom you can tweet to when you're out and need a black cab. If you are signed up to Twitter it won't be long before you're being followed by a company or two.

"Most people use [Twitter] for status updates," says Salim Mitha, founder of the online health and beauty database Wahanda. "We look at it as a communication tool. We can reach customers, other businesses, professionals in the industry, the media."

It has become one of the easiest, most effective and, of course, cheapest ways for companies to get information on promotions and events out to the public and can even be used to address complaints. (Yes, when you tweeted about the poor service you got in a restaurant last week, the maître d' did read it.)

This hasn't gone unnoticed at Twitter HQ, and the founders are already plotting to charge companies for using Twitter as a marketing tool. "We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them," says co-founder Biz Stone. "We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts."

Contrary to what you might think, however, this is quite unlike the one-way traffic of spam email and through-the-door marketing. Not only do companies choose to follow individuals, but people actually follow them back. Sarah Brown, for example, follows Marks & Spencer, Penguin Books and the National Trust, and Boris Johnson follows the wine-tasting centre Vinopolis and Lastminute.com. And, while Stella McCartney predictably follows a jewellery company, a model and actors' agency in New York and a Norwegian online make-up store, Jamie Oliver follows fellow foodie suspects such as Innocent Drinks and Fergus Henderson's restaurant St John.

In fact, dialogue over monologue is important to "civilian" tweeters and most prefer companies that communicate with followers direct and tailor messages to individuals over those that merely "broadcast" (sending updates about themselves and their own promotions). Any company that starts to follow an individual unannounced also risks wading into stalker territory.

Of course, not everybody obeys the unwritten rules. One tweeter was surprised to discover that posting about LoveFilm had prompted the company to follow him, so tried to acquire some other — more desirable — "auto-followers", just by mentioning names. "Whoa Orwellian," he wrote. "A mention of LoveFilm makes them follow me. So er Joan Holloway/Mad Men Bat for Lashes free money! God?"

And while the bakery at the Albion restaurant in Shoreditch, which tweets whenever fresh bread is baked, has 975 followers, it follows no one.

Last month Habitat issued an apology after it used "hashtags" (subject tags that can be used in searches for relevant topics) associated with the Iran protests to try to drive users to its page. It was quickly condemned by tweeters, who posted cries of "terrible marketing behaviour!" and "HabitatUK really needs to clean up its act" among other, far ruder messages.

To be a good corporate tweeter, you have to be clever. At Wahanda they will find and follow Twitter users who look as though they might benefit from the Wahanda service. "It's amazing how many people tweet I need a massage', so we track the word massage' and then we can find people and direct them to treatments at their best and nearest spas," says Mitha.

But, good at it or not, every up-to-the-minute company is signing up a designated corporate tweeter. So, if you have a complaint or you want something, tweet the company's name repeatedly, but if you want to stay under the corporate radar, be careful what you mention.

For updates from the London Evening Standard features desk, follow me on Twitter@JazzStandard