What I do like about Twitter is being the first to know about what goes on at Schiphol during a crash and I definitely want to know what is going on in Iran. What’s bothering me the most about the way microblogs are developing is that they, even without making money are being used by companies to making more profit. We see it already with Dell making 3 million on Twitter and when I look at my Twitter I can see more and more accounts that are only using Twitter to promote their business.

When you ask some of them why they are doing it, they respond with “It’s publicity, so why not use it?”. That way microblogs are more and more going to be used as an commercial medium to get to new buyers, more readers of website and so on. I’m nog sure if I like that. I am, as Chief editor of the Dutch phonesite All About Phones,  telling my editors not to retweet what we put in our website Twitter, but I have to admit that the owner of the website and one of my editors disagree with me.

What are your opinions about this? Do we have to see Twitter and other miniblogs as a commercial tool to get more readers? Or do we need to leave Twitter as it was supposed to be: a nice way of finding new people and keeping in touch with old ones….