Why The New York Times replaced its Twitter ‘cyborg’ with people this week

Poynter reporting:
The New York Times is turning off the automatic feed for its main Twitter account this week in an experiment to determine if a human-run, interactive approach will be more effective.
Social media editors Liz Heron and Lexi Mainland are taking turns running the @nytimes account during weekday business hours, hand-picking and writing the tweets and engaging with readers.
What you’ll see: “@” replies conversing with users, retweets of non-Times accounts and more engagement opportunities for followers. (My Storify below has examples.)
... By calling this an “experiment,” the Times is implying that the outcome is yet unknown. I’d say it’s really more of a demonstration: an effort by the social media staff to prove to the rest of the newsroom that the paper’s main Twitter feed deserves additional resources to maintain this human-driven, personal approach.
Full-time, human hosting of a brand’s main Twitter account is unquestionably a better approach, said Zach Seward, the main voice behind The Wall Street Journal’s @WSJ account.
The @WSJ account has been run by people since January 2010, Seward said. “The metrics went up considerably and almost immediately after switching from automated to personal. We’ve seen the same effect with several other accounts.”


http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/133431/new-york-times-tries-human-powered-tweeting-to-see-if-users-value-the-interaction