How does twitter work? What am I suppose to do on it?

[apple guava]

Okay I've got this twitter account for more than 2 years now and I am following 10 people in total. A lot of my younger friends seem to use it. I'm more a facebook & ICQ / MSN era person.

What am I actually suppose to do with twitter??

That account's been sitting there for 2 years and I log in twice a year to see what's going on. Nuttin. Nuttin-at-all man.

Am I suppose to type something every 2 minutes into some box or something?

What's twitter? How do I use it? What am I suppose to do with it? If I type something into some box, is everyone I'm following going to see it? or everyone who's following me sees it?

What if I just want to send one person I'm following a brief message? Does Twitter do that sort of service? Or does everything I type to that single person, gets seen by everybody following me?

So far twitter comes across as really boring to me, maybe because I am not using it right. Please enlighten me. Thanks.