Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Dell Inc., relying on social- networking sites to drum up sales of personal computers, said its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software.
The number of users signing up to get Dell's tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell's online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets -- Twitter's 140-character messages -- over 35 different channels.
Dell, the third-largest maker of PCs, started using Twitter two years ago to reach new customers. The $6.5 million represents the total amount generated through direct customer interactions on Twitter over that time. While those sales are a fraction of Dell's $61.1 billion in annual revenue last year, the company sees Twitter as one of its most significant ways of interacting with customers, Mehta said.
"It's a very vibrant channel for us and it's growing aggressively," Mehta said in an interview. "It's not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it's that it's happening globally."
Dell reaches Twitter users in 12 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, China and Japan. Brazil's Twitter users spent $800,000 in the past eight months, Mehta said.
San Francisco-based Twitter Inc., which started in 2006, is the third most popular social-networking service in the U.S., according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc. Dell also relies on Facebook Inc., MySpace Inc. and YouTube Inc.
Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, reaches 3.5 million people across the Web through social networks and its own community sites, including Direct2Dell.com and IdeaStorm, Mehta said.
Dell fell 48 cents to $12.81 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 4 p.m. New York time. The stock has climbed 25 percent this year.
The company ranks behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer Inc. in worldwide sales of PCs.
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