There are a lot of Web 2.0 technologies I find interesting. Or at least amusing. And then there are some I just don’t get. Especially when I read articles about incorporating them into everyone’s PR toolbox. Then I think we’re heading in the wrong direction.

Take, for example (disclaimer: I fully expect to eat these words at some point in time) Second Life. I played around with it for a short time. Seems like something high schoolers would really enjoy, so I understand that consumer companies need to pay attention and have a presence. Beyond that, I don’t see real business value. Text 100 has a virtual office to allow distributed teams to meet and collaborate, and I attended a PR meet up at it. All I learned was that I couldn’t keep up with so many instant messages, so the value was lost on me (call me old school, but it seems like a lot of online collaboration tools already exist – and are better suited for the business world). Honestly, my take on Second Life is that it’s a modern day mashup of Dungeons and Dragons meets the Sims.

And then, there’s Twitter. Again, I see a lot potential for this in the consumer world (I’m sure my niece is all about it). John Edwards currently has 1,060 friends and 999 followers on Twitter. Does that mean he’s popular? Howard Dean was popular in the blogosphere in 2004, and that didn’t get him very far. I’d wager a bet that if my dog Brady joined Twitter, he’d be more popular than Edwards. So it could be fun to measure popularity, but that only goes so far.

In the business world, do you really care that I had PB&J for lunch? Or that my feet are cold right now? Yet, a lot are jumping on the “Twitter as the next communication channel” band wagon, including Steve Rubel (and again here, and here and even here). Web Worker Daily provides eight tips on how to make Twitter useful professionally, including #6: find out when your colleagues are available for a chat. Seriously? Isn’t that what the “away” message on IM is for? Is it really that cumbersome to type in a “you there” message?

Maybe I’m just not making the right connection (I probably missed the Twitter message because it was sent to my Second Life avatar), but both of these technologies seem like novelties, not real PR tools.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. Do you think these technologies can help PR people? Excluding consumer PR efforts, I’d love to see examples of how.