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If the Editor of a newspaper were to suggest that he owned you just because you are reading these lines, you might understandably be puzzled. Perhaps, not unreasonably, you would be downright irritated that the choice you made to read a particular article in a particular newspaper on a particular day could make you the property of a particular journalist.

Even if you are a subscriber to a paper, a devoted News at Ten viewer or loyal Today programme listener, it’s unlikely you would consider yourself to be the goods and chattels of those journalists who bring you the news.

Yet my departure from the BBC to become business editor at ITV News led to a sometimes frenzied conversation online, in diary columns, and even on the front page of one newspaper over the question of who “owned” the 60,000 or so people who had followed me on Twitter as @BBCLauraK.

For me, such talk of the BBC “losing” thousands of digital consumers as I “took” them with me as I moved to become @ITVLauraK was based on a misunderstanding of this new medium.

Spend any time on Twitter and it is obvious that it is hardly a place where wallflowers linger, waiting silently and patiently for an invitation to participate in the debate. I didn’t choose the boisterous, diverse, direct and often delightful 67,000 who followed my account. They chose to follow me. And their reasons for doing so were many and varied.

So while the agreement with the BBC that I could transfer my Twitter name was entirely amicable, and I wish my successor, @BBCNormanS, well, I was, and still am, well aware that the followers of my account could, with just one click, switch off from the 140-character missives I write throughout the day. Indeed, with the tendency for full and frank disclosure that Twitter encourages, a small handful of followers did in fact get in touch to tell me they were checking out. Happily, though, the vast majority have stayed put.

Given my belief that those who tweet have minds of their own, the clamour over what would happen to @BBCLauraK, the corporation’s first official journalist Twitter stream, took me rather by surprise. But, more importantly, what the fuss did demonstrate was how central online reporting has become to the work of journalists. No doubt, having started tweeting as an experiment two years ago during the party conference season, it became almost as important to me to break stories on Twitter as it did to get them on air on the BBC’s rolling news channel.

There is a seemingly ravenous appetite for insight or inside information even with the tiny amount of space that Twitter’s 140 characters afford. It’s no surprise that in the Westminster world, where the wheels are greased with gossip, tiny bites of information are exchanged and discussed online with gusto.

It’s logical, then, that politicians have joined in, with more than a third of MPs using Twitter. Government departments and political activists are flocking to it too. And unlike with the actual debates that take place in public and in private, you don’t have to be elected to take part, or be a Westminster journalist to watch in person, or press your ear to the wall.

So far in Twitter’s short life, businesses and bosses have taken to the format in a rather different way. Of course, many companies are pursuing the commercial opportunities it can give. But the raucous and rapid back and forth that Twitter has enabled in politics seems to be still some distance away. Search for some of the country’s most important chief executives on Twitter, and they are not there.

And the boss of one of the country’s biggest supermarkets has only a small fraction of the followers that the Leader of the Opposition has, even though you may well think his influence on our daily lives is just as great. I hope this can and will change, especially given that right now so many of the public’s concerns are rooted in how their own businesses or jobs are faring and how they are going to make ends meet.

Whether that hesitancy to take part in social media will wither away is unknown. But it’s clear that the most important players of all — viewers and readers — are looking for accurate news and information online or on their phones in enormous numbers.

So, in my new berth, I’ll be on the ITV News live stream, using Twitter to break stories, share observations and hear from viewers. I know I can’t make the 67,000 followers all stay or the number grow because it’s up to them to choose. But whatever the subject, using Twitter is now part of what journalists do and what our readers and viewers expect. It’s a live place for fast and open conversation at a time when there is plenty to discuss.

Tags: @Business, @ITVLauraK, Twitter