A friend of mine convinced me to look into Twitter by suggesting some interesting practical uses. Mostly I think of it as message queue I can play with to drive applications.

I don't really get the self-absorbed stream-of-minutia thing.

One of the goofiest messages I saw was something along the lines of, "I'm at a bar with a hot chick, having a drink."

I'm sure that went well.

I don't care about Twitter's original idea, and I think most interesting people doesn't either. Twitter is better used like a tool to keep in touch with colleagues and people, and to know other people in the field. In Buenos Aires, this kind of communication through Twitter has recently originated a huge new group of local start up entrepreneurs. So I guess it can be useful if it's well used.

It's for communication. Pretty much a fundamental need for the human animal.

Email, IM, IRC are for communication.

Twitter seems to be more for "Announcing" rather than communicating.

Maybe I'm just not well connected enough, but I really doubt anyone in the world cares what I'm currently doing day to day. The people that do care, I communicate with via more appropriate methods.

It's still communicating, and that's what it's for. I mean I get what you're saying, you don't want to communicate anything that's particularly suited to a twitter sort of form, and that that form of communication therefore seems trivial. I'm just saying communication forms a fundamental need, and if something facilitates that then thats what its for.

Announcing or Broadcasting are still forms of communication. Email, IM, and IRC don't really allow you to do that. That's why I think Twitter fills a gap in communication methods. A lot of people don't like to broadcast their life. I understand that, but some people do like to let other people know what's going on.