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Too casual puts me off (HP has a person who makes me never want to buy from them again), but if I don't get a sense of "real person" from you, I think you are lying to me.

Social media is about people interacting, even when those people work for huge companies. Talking with the same stilted, jargony crap that shows up on the web site is worse than not communicating at all. And that's what corporate standards tend to breed.

I think one of the companies that uses social media well and without that 'oh too cool' casual style is mediatemple. I find their tweets and video posts to be professional and personable. Even when other twitterers are screaming at them when one of their shared servers goes down.

There is an immediate drop in creditability when a business is too friendly or too casual. I don't think you need to be cold and formal to portray a sense of responsibility and professionalism. It's about striking a balance between the extremes and reflecting the type of business you are.

It's all about building report with users: make them feel like your web app is an actual person, and they tend to trust you and want to use you more.

What's better: a cold, formal tone that is very professional, or one that is casual and makes you feel like an actual person is behind the monitor?

It's all a matter of opinion, and definitely depends on what you are selling. Banks? Definitely shouldn't be doing that.

Presumably the point of the betfair twitter stream mentioned http://twitter.com/betfair is to get an audience, any audience. It is pretty bizarre. Cant imagine most companies agreeing to it. More interesting than the cutesy style that gets annoying very fast.
I blame Pret A Manger. They have been doing this for years, I think the goal has been to make you think it is not a store, but a collection of foodstuffs curated a manic pixie dream girl, and oh yeah, you can totes buy the bananna bread! It is sooooooo good!
Apart from D. Foster Wallace, another pioneer in the usage of ironic prose in journalism would be Wired Magazine. (They started publication in 1993.)
It's a small point to make but there are no cat videos on my small corner of facebook :)