It is probably only good for communications. A spinner with poor attitude control (you do not really have a lot of room for good mechanical or optical rate gyro

It is probably only good for communications. A spinner with poor attitude control (you do not really have a lot of room for good mechanical or optical rate gyros, not to mention the lack of any means to perform orbital maneuvers) and small payloads will probably not work well for imaging or radar. However, there are a lot of companies and universities looking into small satellites, since it is much, much cheaper than launching larger satellites with expensive payloads. There is a lot of research in the area and a lot of small sat conferences as well (e.g. http://www.smallsat.org/ http://www.smallsat.org/). If this pans out, it could be the end of the US government's large satellite oligopoly, which currently consists of only a few large companies like Lockheed Martin (disclaimer: that is where I work) and Boeing.