Earlier this year the CRM vendor announced plans to build ‘Toyota Friend’, a private social network for Toyota customers and their cars.
This week Toyota unveiled the soon-to-be-launched Prius PHV plug-in hybrid in Japan, and with this, Toyota made ‘Toyota Friend’ available for the first time.
This vehicle will launch in Japan on 30 January 2012 and one of the features being offered free of charge is:
“Toyota Friend: A proprietary social networking service that provides charging and service reminders via “tweet”-like alerts. It also enables communication amongst Prius PHV users.”
Toyota Friend will be powered by Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce.com’s enterprise social messaging platform. Toyota Friend will connect Toyota customers with their cars, their dealership, and with Toyota.
Information that is expected to filter through the application include product and service data as well as maintenance tips. It is not a closed loop system, however, which could be key to marketers: customers can communicate to family, friends, and others through Twitter and Facebook. The service will also be accessible through smart phones, tablet PCs, and other advanced mobile devices.