I read about Scoble thinking of killing his Twitter account, and it seems more and more like the anti-commercialism backlash that we hear with each new service- Going back to Canter and Siegel- the couple in who sent their Green Card spam to thousands of usenet groups in 1994.
I keep seeing outrage posted on Twitter, in the form of "Why is [company] using twitter to [perceived spammy practice]? [hateful judgement]" It seems to have grown worse with the advent of bots for automating a corporate/for-profit twitter presence. The ghost-writers/celebrity tweet phenomenon (seriously, Guy Kawasaki?) didn't seem to help.
The tools to automate an external social media presence (e.g. marketing or PR) are getting some traction but it's becoming painful to the user community. Should we get mad at the brands, or Twitter?
It seems like a much better response to attempt to influence the strategies employed by firms to manage their social presence. If Twitter doesn't want us to leave, the ads will be tasteful and/or relevant. Not to mention that at the enterprise level, the opportunity to drive internal morale/knowledge should be just as large as driving brand love and PR externally.
But can we remedy the corporate, pretend to be a person presence? Is this a possible business for Jeff Dachis new venture? I'll keep an eye on that.