Choochoobot in Source’s #botweek

29 Apr 2016

I wrote about some of the things I learned from @choochoobot’s development (and popularity) for Source for its annual #botweek. It’s a little strange writing about programming projects, because I still feel very inexperienced, but I think there are some easy lessons to pull out here.

People do not behave rationally around emoji. A large and growing group of people love them more than anybody should love a font, and a small and shrinking set of people think they signal the end of polite interpersonal communication. In any case, that split has fueled the reaction to this bot, and it’s something to keep in mind: when crafting the “tone” of your tweets, you can choose to make them fun, and make people like seeing them.

Much more where that came from over at Source, and I’m hoping to do more @choochoobot work this weekend.