How is Twitter useful?

[JoeDew]

I have been using Twitter now for almost two years and I have yet to find why it's worth my time. I really don't care if so and so landed at JFK or found some really cool article. I'm tempted to close my account but am hoping to "see the light" as to why Twitter is useful. Can someone enlighten me?

[Mark]

Twitter useful:
Get questions answered
Expand your professional network
Promote your blog posts

[BridgetC]

It is good for keeping up networking with others, but I think the real value comes in using its search features.

I'm a total information junkie, so I use it a lot to search what others are saying about specific topics- like when there was a big fire in my city people were tweeting about the fire long before the news networks got a hold of the info. So I could keep up on what was happening, see links to flickr pics people took of the fire, etc.

As for networking- it's good for sharing info, but also for getting info from your own network. Like, if you have a question that you need answered you can ask on twitter and probably get a bunch of responses. If you use hashtags and search, you'll get responses from people you don't know or aren't following, too- so if your friends don't know the answer maybe someone else does.
Example- I live in China, so I often want to know if a certain internet site is blocked for everyone here or if its just my internet acting up. I use #gfw (the hashtag for great firewall) and type "is facebook blocked or is it just me" and within minutes a search for #gfw has people responding yes or no and what city/area they are in. Most of the time people will also put things like "I'm using Hotspot Shield to get past the block- DM me and I can send it to you" which is super useful!