Twitter has established itself as the social PR tool on the web. Any brand on the web that wants to signal effort and understanding of the game must have a Twit

Twitter has established itself as the social PR tool on the web. Any brand on the web that wants to signal effort and understanding of the game must have a Twitter account with daily updates. The value for marketers is clear. It's an inexpensive way to build organic traction. The value for individual users, who are the product, is less clear. Twitter is immensely noisy, and is becoming more noisy as it's use as a PR tool increases. It's not clear to me why, overall, it's worth it for people to read their Twitter feeds. I certainly don't read mine, I just push out a tweet a day to signal I'm trendy. For example, Fred Wilson's Twitter updates are links to his blog posts plus some (for me) out of context public messages to people I don't know, ie. junk (for me). I might as well unsubscribe and add his RSS to Google Reader and save myself the noise. Just did.