The Value of Twitter

The Philadelphia Enquirer pulled its "audience team", off of twitter and replaced them with an automated bot.

It turned out that there was no change in referral traffic:

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s audience team used to spend 80% of its time on Twitter for a 2-3% return in referral traffic.

“And I was like, well that’s ridiculous,” said Kim Fox, managing editor for audience and innovation.

Now, the Inquirer’s Twitter flagship accounts are automated, and the Inquirer gets … yes … about a 2-3% return in referral traffic. ………

This wan't a heavy duty AI bot.  It's basically an RSS feed.

I am not surprised.

It's the nature of the medium.