There are a lot of reasons to love Twitter. Practical reasons, like, it brings breaking news to your desktop (or phone, I guess, if you're one of those people) so that, TV and other media off, you're always aware of what's going on. You can use it to keep track of your reading or your diet or to track packages. You can interact with customer service at some companies. You can use it to follow blog posts, or you can feed it your own blog posts, so that Twitter becomes an alternate means of subscription. (And I think all bloggers should set up Twitter accounts for their blogs as a convenience to their readers.) You can set things up so that you're Twittered whenever someone lands on your site, or a particular page thereof. Obviously, you can use Twitter to communicate with individuals--someone two feet away or halfway around the world, so that you can now keep in touch with far-flung friends in an immediate, intimate, they're-right-in-the-room-with-you way that was never possible previously. You can throw out questions and get feedback. And using Twitter Search you can watch the global conversation about a particular topic. That's got to be one of the most important uses of Twitter.
Another reason I like Twitter, though, is because of the people-watching aspect of it. I've always thought that if I were house-bound, I would be happy to sit next to a window and watch what was going on outside, given a view of a street with enough foot traffic. Sitting here at my computer in my lair, I've got a virtual version of that as new tweets pop up in the corner of my screen from time to time. I know that @wisekaren has been dreaming about @guykawasaki, and @guykawasaki (along with lots of other folks) is thinking about robots, and @ian_hocking opted to drink tea rather than go Christmas shopping (wise man). I can, if I choose, open the window and communicate with the folks out there.
Or I can just sit back and people watch.
