BANGALORE: India's Kingfisher Airlines today announced that it has become the first airline from India to embrace social media and set up a full-fledged formal presence on www.twitter.com.

This initiative would make it easier for anyone to receive instant updates from Kingfisher Airlines and more importantly, open a new platform for the brand to actively converse with its guests, said a press release.

With the debut of this service, Kingfisher Airlines joins a growing global band of savvy marketers who have recognized the power and reach of new media like the social and community networking, it added.

FlyKingfisher on Twitter is a free social service that enables guests and users to read updates from the airlines in social media lingo - the FlyKingfisher tweets. The service is due to commence shortly, the release added.

Vikram Malhotra, vice president- marketing, Kingfisher Airlines Limited said, “With the launch of the FlyKingfisher on Twitter, we hope to start a dialogue and actively participate in conversations with our stakeholders in a setting where people are connected without intermediaries through their interests and relationships.”

Given the fact that ‘airlines’ are one of the most commonly mentioned categories of brands on Twitter, Kingfisher feels this service would be a very valuable tool for it to start a dialogue with stakeholders and actively participate in the conversation.

The updates are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the Fly Kingfisher profile page and delivered to guests and users who have subscribed to it (followers) - via RSS, e-mail or mobile.