Twitter hashtag #chats: Valuable or just noise?

There are a ton of "hash tag" chats on Twitter. You've seen them: #journchat, #editorchat, #PR20chat, #blogchat -- the list is pretty long. The question is, do they do any more than create noise?

In theory, the chats are great for inspiring community and conversation around a topic. But how much value do the attendees really get out of a crowd of tweets and hashtags? And what does your network do if they don't want to overhear it anymore?

On the Sept. 24 Oct. 8 edition of the Quick'n'Dirty Podcast, I, along with co-host Aaron Strout and special guest Deb Robison, will discuss these chats. We'll combine unofficial survey data (with your help!) and our own experiments and trials that we'll conduct over the next week or so. The results will also be published on this blog.

Interested in particpating? Take the poll here.