DERIDDER—The tsunami of social networking has hit Beauregard Parish with a wave of new profiles being posted by local entities.

The social networking site Facebook is allowing business, churches and government communicate with the people they service.

The City of DeRidder  launched its page on Facebook last Thursday and have had a positive response thus far.

“We launched the site on Thursday and received 75 fans that day,” said DeRidder Mayor secretary Kerri Broussard.

“As of Wednesday we have 697 registered fans. We are noticing the need to connect with a different brand of customer.”

The city is promoting their public transportation effort and the Beauregard Education link along with answering the public’s questions about the city’s ongoing projects.

“It’s easy to use and it’s just another means of communication,” said Broussard.

A local charity is utilizing the internet as an outlet to pass on information.

BeauCARE has launched its page and posts events and pictures to keep the public informed of their efforts.

“We can reach a large amount of people in short amount of time,” said executive director of BeauCARE Annette Duplechin.

“We try to update the page three to four times a week to keep it fresh.”

Duplechin lauds the easy of use and availibilty of the site.

“I can update the profile from anywhere. If I’m away on business, I can still update information as needed,” said Duplechin.

A soon to come Facebook profile page is The Greater Beauregard Chamber of Commerce.

“We plan to use it as a means to collect comments and questions from the public to better serve them,” said executive director of the chamber Avon Knowlton.

They are currently working to get their information on Facebook and hope to have it up and running in the next few weeks.

“We are always looking to get information out to the public and we see this as a great tool to communicate more efficiently,” said Knowlton.

With the advent of iPhone, and other smartphones, apps Facebook is now channeled directly to the user. A personal computer in not required to update a profile status, or receive updates from friends. When pages are updated the new information is sent directly to a user if they have Facebook on iPhone.

The Beauregard Daily News uses Facebook to get breaking information into the hands of users as fast and accurately as possible. Stories are linked and video can be posted for a complete multimedia experience.

Other entities on Facebook from Beauregard Parish are: B’Arc, Family Life Church of Merryville, South Beauregard Alumni, Beauregard Parish 4-H, DeRidder MOPS, First United Methodist Church of DeRidder, DeRidder Dixie Youth, Keep DeRidder Beautiful, Merle Norman, US Army Recruiting and Brookshire Brothers.