~ builds on milestone 10 million views of historic website forums ~

Sheffield-based Internet Service Provider (ISP) Plusnet has launched a social and discussion site aimed at its 200,000 customers – http://community.plus.net.

The new site is based around online discussion forums, enabling Plusnet customers to become part of the company’s growing internet community and also contribute to Plusnet’s plans for future products and services. The site brings together customers from all PlusNet plc’s brands – PlusNet, Force9, Free-Online and Metronet.

Specific areas of the site have been created to allow customers to provide feedback on Plusnet’s services and offer suggestions about future products and services. In addition, subscribers can go online to talk about more general issues in the internet sector such as gaming, wireless broadband, computers and hardware, voice over IP (VoIP) and emerging Web 2.0 applications.

Plusnet also publishes a number of blogs via the Community site: the Innovation and Internet blog from Plusnet’s chief information officer, Dean Sadler, looks at trends and new technologies in the internet space; a Traffic Management blog provides debate around the issues of bandwidth management and the role of the ISP; there are also blogs from its Comms Team, Web Portal Team and Customer Support Centre, which are designed to keep customers updated on what’s happening within Plusnet.

Plusnet has always embraced the community approach with the use of online customer forums and has now taken this a step further with the Community site. Since their launch in 2000, Plusnet’s previous forums have attracted more than 10 million views and 100,000 active users.

‘Kitz’ is one of the most longstanding and respected members of the Plusnet community and ‘owner’ of kitz.co.uk, the popular broadband information resource.

“There's been a lively community around Plusnet for many years. There’s a large resource of knowledgeable staff that partake in discussions and take onboard comments and suggestions for improving the service. Although obviously the company may not act on every suggestion, its pro-active approach makes it stands apart from most ISPs,” said Kitz.

Neil Armstrong, products director at Plusnet, said “The internet is buzzing with conversations. Websites like Facebook and MySpace are introducing a new wider group of people to online debates. Plusnet has always embraced online social forums – first with usenet groups, our internal website forums and now the Community site which anyone can access.” He continued, “Our new Community site is designed for customers who want to get involved in discussions about the internet in general but also to feed-back on how we’re doing as a company and where they would like us to go in the future.”