Real-Estate Firms Get a Handle on Twitter

The commercial real-estate industry is notorious for being slow to embrace new technology. Social networking is no exception.

But that is finally beginning to change. Some top firms are beefing up their activity on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, and some brokers say they are doing deals thanks to leads generated by the sites.

As recently as 2010, four years after the launch of Twitter, many brokers didn't even know what the service was.

"People don't understand it," confessed Ron Houghtaling, CBRE Group Inc.'s head of social media, at a 2010 technology conference.

Today, CBRE leads the Twitter pack among major firms with more than 26,000 followers. Meanwhile Jones Lang LaSalle, is second with 16,048 and has a four-person social-media team that also manages accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites.

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