My gut says no. yes. no. yes … well maybe, but not too much.
I recently attended the Social Capital Conference hosted here in Ottawa (a great event, if you’re thinking of attending the 2013 event) and attended a great session hosted by Kelly Rusk on using social media for research. You can read a recap of her presentation on her website, kellyrusk.ca.
At one point in her presentation, Rusk talked about ‘babble’, the seemingly inane, which allows companies to connect with individuals. “I love babble,” she said.
I put up my hand, and asked her – and the room – if they felt the source of the Twitter account determined whether or not they were interested in babble.
This is something I’ve been thinking about in our newsroom, where we have two Twitter accounts: @OCHeadlines, which is a robot-feed of headlines as they update in the various sections of our site; and @OttawaCitizen, which is operated by ‘humans’, who can respond to reader questions about stories, delivery, etc. as well as post breaking news – and tell you why you might want to read a story (providing as much context as possible in 140 characters).
Do people really want us to babble?