To some of you, this may sound as a compliment. It is not. Twittering is probably one of the most obsolete, wasteful phenomena I have ever witnessed. After an initial trial I decided to pass, as I could not reason why a flurry of tweets would help me get through the day.

And things are getting worse, as people start syndicating their blogs, pages and profiles. Now an avalanche of sheer triviality is constantly harassing me, keeping me up to date with the momentous travails of people twittering how they ‘are just about to enter a client meeting’ or ‘just had a wonderful sip of frappuccino at Helsinki airport’. Who cares?

Frankly, it becomes irritating. It is like a mind numbing buzz we still have to learn how to cope with. Where have we seen this before? That’s right, advertising! For those who see Twitter as another example of how the web spurs true dialogue, they could not be more wrong. Twitter is not about interaction. It is about sending. It is about telling the world what a wonderful, successful and multitalented person you are. Twitter is a medium for personal branding, helping you create a market image and presence by constant messaging.

Twitterers act in the same way as brands. They try to build and maintain ‘awareness’ among their ‘target audience’, entering the ‘evoked set’ or shortlist of personalities that easily spring to mind. Twitterers ‘position’ themselves through their audience and the kind of tweets they send. They create a sustainable ‘image’ by constantly feeding certain ‘associations’. Let’s call these people Tweetbrands.

And to my annoyance, it works, at least to a certain degree. I cannot help but acknowledge the ‘presence’ of some Tweetbrands, notwithstanding their useless blabbering. Although I find their behaviour at times pathetic, I cannot suppress a vague notion of success. It does resemble how advertising works, at least back in the good old days of passive consumerism.

The parallel does not stop here. I think people will grow tired of this self-promotion, just as they have learnt to reject autistic brands. Twitter will start suffering from ‘clutter’, the overabundance of messages devoid of real value, just as the old media. The nasty habit of syndication is reminiscent of ad campaigns trailing you at each ‘touch point’.

So is Twitter any good? Obviously Twitter can be a very useful information filter. It is unbeatable at disseminating news, as the Iran revolt has shown. But starting a bush fire to tell the world you are great seems a bit overdone…