1) Twitter is like any other social network-- its value to you is dependent on which of your friends is on it. For most of us who have lots of friends that aren't 100% plugged-in to the hottest web trends, this severely limits twitter's value. However, the technorati get a lot of value from Twitter in that it's an elite social network (aka mutual backrubbing), and a way of getting to each other's inboxes (via @ and d messages). The electronic equivalent of TED and Davos.
2) Twitter is basically a blog platform in disguise-- where the hordes of wannabes who follow calcanis and ev and scoble really what they're doing is a fancy equivalent of subscribing to their rss feed leaving comments on their blog entries, with the added social bonus of making it seem like you're with the 'in' crowd since you're on twitter leaving @messages for loiclemeur like the big boys do (see 1 above).
The point 1) is only partially true. For example, I don't have any friends on Twitter, but I use tweetscan to search twitter, when I want to see most current events about something...for example, I want to buy some newly announced gadget, so I do a search now and then to see links to new reviews, or short ideas from early users about how they like or dislike it.
I think this might by one reason why twitter is so popular - it can be used for many different purposes.
1) Twitter is like any other social network-- its value to you is dependent on which of your friends is on it. For most of us who have lots of friends that aren't 100% plugged-in to the hottest web trends, this severely limits twitter's value. However, the technorati get a lot of value from Twitter in that it's an elite social network (aka mutual backrubbing), and a way of getting to each other's inboxes (via @ and d messages). The electronic equivalent of TED and Davos.
2) Twitter is basically a blog platform in disguise-- where the hordes of wannabes who follow calcanis and ev and scoble really what they're doing is a fancy equivalent of subscribing to their rss feed leaving comments on their blog entries, with the added social bonus of making it seem like you're with the 'in' crowd since you're on twitter leaving @messages for loiclemeur like the big boys do (see 1 above).