Mediaboss Marketing

A bike thief who failed to factor in the power of social networking abandoned his spoils after being chased through the streets of an Australian city by the rider's Facebook friends.

When Akira Takahashi returned from lunch to find someone had cut the lock to his AU$2,000 (US$2,072) bike in Adelaide's central business district on Friday, the quick-thinking restaurant worker immediately posted news of the theft on his Facebook profile rather than going to police.

'I know about 200 Facebook friends who work in the city so I knew it would be more effective than going straight to the police -- I couldn't just sit and wait, I wanted to hunt it down,' Takahashi, 27, said.

The ploy paid immediate dividends, with one friend seeing the distinctive custom-made bike being ridden down a nearby street by a 'scruffy-looking man with a beard.'

'He saw the bike and chased him, yelling out to pedestrians that he was riding a stolen bike, but because of the traffic he lost him,' Takahashi said.

'He must have been thinking, 'Oh, no, I've stolen the wrong bike here.' I think he got scared that all these people were chasing him around the town.'

Another friend, bike courier Phil Portellos, saw the Facebook post and sent a text message to colleagues to keep an eye out for the bicycle.

The exasperated thief gave up and dumped the bike behind a pillar and fled on foot when one of Portellos' friends took up the pursuit.

The bike was eventually returned to Takahashi by Portellos after a fellow courier found it and phoned him.

'Usually when a bike like this gets stolen you assume you're never going to see it again,' Portellos said. 'A lot of people are saying he owes me a beer.'

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Social networking stops thief