half of my updates on twitter are replies to friends or coworkers, so it's mostly about communication about current projects, discussing news, etc.

and I only follow people that I've met irl

Then I guess it's a matter of different social spheres. Where I am nobody uses Twitter.

depends also on what you do. i work with many companies and many entrepreneurs so that's where twitter is useful. solo-entrepreneurs, consultants, bloggers might also find very it useful.

also, if you go to local programming/hacker meetups, you're bound to find a few who use twitter.

But that's the problem. I dislike most programmer/hacker types. While I think I've something of a hacker personality, I'm far more a critic than I am a hacker. And most hackers are completely unpolished and unfocused. The people who follow my account on Twitter, for instance, are the sorts of people who constantly linkspam. I can't stand that. And I find some people on Twitter funny, but that isn't productive and it's not thought-provoking. Blog posts at least provide some thought: Twitter, I find, rarely does.

Wow that's a lot of generalizations.

What if you just stuck to following friends only? Or is it the chicken/egg problem?

Just because they follow you doesn't mean you have to follow them. :)

Restaurant, music and book recommendations alone have been worth it. Also, it's an easy way to keep in touch with people without much work.

But you're right - if you don't have a solid group of friends using it - it's retarded.

It depends on who you follow.

I followed Merlin. :-/

Seriously, most of the things people would say there - Merlin and Zeldman especially - were more geared towards humorous than they were towards at all interesting. RSS worked a lot better if I was looking for productive content.

An interesting take: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.htm...