If you're part of the minority that doesn't have an account on a social media website you may be missing out on some important information. We're not talking about updates from your friends. Local law enforcement agencies and city governments have joined the social network scene.
It's estimated Facebook http://www.facebook.com has 750 million active users and Twitter http://www.twitter.com boasts about 110 million. With so many people logging on to social media sites, for hours at a time in some cases, Horry County Police and the City of North Myrtle Beach say they are just keeping up with the times.
Sgt. Robert Kegler with Horry County Police serves as the Public Information Officer.
Part of his job is fielding media calls and now updating the police department's Facebook and Twitter pages.
"Quite frankly it's hard to find a business that's not using it now and we are a business. The citizens are our customers so we would be behind the eight ball if we didn't use it," explains Sgt. Kegler.
Thursday afternoon Sgt. Kegler posted suspect information from a bank robbery on the south end. "It was put on Facebook within 10, 15 minutes. As soon as the first officer arrived on scene and got a preliminary suspect description he notified his lieutenant who in turn called me and gave me the particulars on the suspect."
Kegler says that immediacy is beneficial to the community and the department, "we're getting some good feedback we are getting phone calls based on stuff that we put out. just possibilities of suspects so it's definitely helping out. It's a good tool."
Pawleys Island Police Chief Guy Osborne agrees. He says the department's Twitter page "is a great form of communication."
For the City of North Myrtle Beach it's a way to interact with the community.
"People do communicate that way and we have to stay with the times and so we feel it's important to reach out to folks any way that we can," adds Steve Thomas, Assistant City Manager.
One agency that's absent from social media sites is the City of Myrtle Beach Police Department. Officials say they may join Facebook in the future. For now, they offer a Police to Citizen website. There you can find incident reports, press releases, and a community calendar.
