The twittersphere was all atwitter today about a public relations firm that sent out an email to a ginormous list of social media and other journalists who erupted in anger over the fact that they were spammed. Not sure what was worse–the stupidity of the email or the wronged recipients who then hit reply all to create a thread of ire.

The other day I was in the office all day and had many lively conversations and not once did I open my mouth. All of those conversations were through Twitter, Facebook, and conventional email. And while I was productive and shared ideas, it was all a bit unsatisfying.

I recently came upon a great post in TechCrunch about the 10 words writer Robin Wauters would like to see banned from public relations and press releases. He’s right–there are a lot of mindless, vapid press releases out there that are really nothing more than marketing puffery rather than conveyors of useful and important information that in the old days we called “news.” And while it’s easy to dump on PR folks, instead of saying what shouldn’t be, maybe we should look at how it ought to be.

There is a number floating out there that 90% of blogs are abandoned after six months. Even though I haven’t written in almost a month, I have no intention of abandoning this cog in the social media wheel and will not be part of that 90%. Let’s just say that life got in the way for a few weeks.

For those who are of a certain age, social networking–Facebook, Twitter, blogging–may seem like a waste of time. Not too long ago, I sat at a dinner party where one person declared that the impact of social media was all a fad. Maybe certain tools will rise and fall but social networking is here to stay and it is and will continue to evolve. For those who dismiss it as a tool for kids, they do so at their own peril.