I think the original idea of Twitter was basically to allow people to have "personal RSS" feeds without having technical knowledge or having to start up a blog.

I think the original idea of Twitter was basically to allow people to have "personal RSS" feeds without having technical knowledge or having to start up a blog. That plus built-in aggregation. So personal RSS for nontechnical folks + built-in aggregation. It's a little ironic to me, then, that this concern is being posted on Twitter of all places. I agree with the concern, I think RSS (or something closely related, like a decentralized version) should be maintained as a communication method, but I think there's a usability issue that's driving it.