The birdie was incorrect. Since none of the transactions will get confirmed the sender has no idea what happened with any of them.
The rumour going around was that this could be used to link addresses together. That could only happen if you spent these coins in another transaction. Since they will never confirm you will never be spending them. So that doesn't work.
AFAIK the spam/griefer hypothesis is the best anyone has come up with.
what about if/when one satoshi = 1 USD ? eventually we will see them being confirmed...hmmm food for thought ~~~ ;-)