At the end of May the New York Times replaced its automated Twitter cyborg with the tweets of in house social media editors. The move was a test to determine whether the paper should invest in personalized tweets over a deluge of automatic headlines, but the result will mark something more significant than just another hire at the paper.

Up to this point the New York Times leaned on its brand image and reputation to earn influence in the social world, but moving permanently into a hand curated social presence could signal the manifestation of social influence as a valid driver of revenue.

This is what the New York Times is poring over now as they consider the investment of a new hire to tend to their Twitter account. It's also what drove Google Boutiques to create hand curated eCommerce storefronts to augment their previously all-powerful search algorithms.

The pendulum has swung away from static metrics that happened last month toward measurements that are liquid, dynamic, semantic, and instant. Developers have built technologies that enable meaningful connections, and as a reflection, this is becoming the way of the web. In turn, social will become a valid driver of revenue. Influence will become its currency.

When it comes to the decision of whether or not to hire an official Twitter employee, the New York Times may be able to slide by a little longer with a cyborg social presence. Their Klout score stayed solid at 86 for the duration of their experiment, but when we're talking about a Twitter handle with 670,759 retweets, it's going to take a lot more than a week long experiment to make a dent in their score.

So far the New York Times is riding by with respectable marks in social pull, but when compared with the ability of individuals like Justin Bieber, or Nicki Minaj to spread information socially, it's hard to justify sticking with a cyborg much longer.