[citation][nom]fuser[/nom]What is gained by following anyone on Twitter? Please help me understand this "new" technology. CNN.com drank the Kool-aide about two months ago and I can barely bring myself to visit that site now.[/citation]
Think of it a bit like mini-rss - something which the geekier of geeks will have used. Twitter's basically a mix between short news feeds that could have been sent via rss and Facebook status updates. You wouldn't sign up to a BBC News friend on Facebook just to get news items piped through to you but you would add them on Twitter. Its basically a feed of short messages from whoever you want. Some people use it to follow friends, others use it to keep an eye on what's going on in certain businesses, others use it as a feed to know what's going on in their governments and others use it to get general news sent through to them from different sources that they're interested in, all to one place.