Hey Steve,
In your article, you said
I've been using Twitter for about 4 or 5 months now and it's one of those things that I'm not sure of the benefit of using it.
While I admit, I have not been using it as religiously as I used to, here is one area where I really found Twitter's usefulness.
Twitter enables me to stay better connected with my friends (the ones that use it, anyway).
When I was first introduced, I thought, "this is just stupid". But, after a while, I found that for those friends of mine that were good about keeping it updated and actually answering the question, "what am I doing.", I found that I was actually building stronger relationships with these friends. Why? even though a simple "Going to the park" message doesn't seem like much, if you look at a friend's whole week, or month, you can instantly see all the events that have happened of enough significance for them to actually microblog about it. This gives you a small window into their lives and that can actually help you to get to know them a bit better.
As a busy developer, who was never particularly very good about reaching out and talking to my friends, and who, for some reason, get's phone shy every now and then. I have found that this is a better way to keep in touch than my previous model. I find it easier to say a little blurb about what's going on in my own life, so some people get to know me better, too.
The result is that the next time I get together with these friends, most of the small talk has already been gotten out of the way and rather than asking them what they've been up to, I can ask them more specific questions like, "how was that boating trip you took the other week?", or "How are you coming along with the job search?".
Again, the point is I just end up feeling more connected.
Of course, some people use it as a marketing tool as well, and I've gotten some useful information from time to time from some of those types of folks, too.
For the most part, I try to get more quality connections than those. I don't just follow everyone who follows me. I will typically only follow someone who is following me if I see some substance in their posts, and if they don't have way more people they are following than who are following them.