I have been, and still am, resistant to Twitter. Yes, it's a cool service and it let's you easily connect with all sorts of amazing people, but getting true value from my time investment in it has been difficult. [Just check out this post, it's not that far from the truth.] Twitter is about two things: who follows you and who you follow. Because you have control over the latter, let's start with that. There are basically four type of people that you can follow:

1. People you know (friends, family, coworkers, etc.)
2. People you have to follow (your boss, clients, etc.)
3. People who you find interesting that you don't know (often top Twitterers)
4. People you follow because they follow you

If you follow all four of these types, your Twitter feed is probably so full of posts that it is too overloaded to do anything aside from browse now and then. If you've spent any time analyzing your Twitter usage you've probably started to trim back on types 1 and 2, and ruled out 4 altogether. (Remember just because you like someone in real life does not mean that their Twitter feed is worth following.) This trimming probably helped cut down on the "Having lunch with @myfriend" and "dude, I hate Mondays" and "#myfirstjob" tweets, but it didn't stop them altogether. Those types of things are just a distraction. If you are using Twitter as a distraction, great, or if you want to use it to talk to buddies, that's cool too, but if you want it to be a professional tool what value are you getting (as a follower) or instilling (as a poster) from these? But Twitter would be boring without this stuff, right? And how else could we better get to know our associates without them telling us how awesome their last jog was or how cold it is outside? Before we get too far, I'd like to point out why I've been hesitant to get too involved in Twitter. It's about distractions (which should be kept to a minimum) and persistent tasks. For me, a persistent task (more accurately, a persistent tab) is anything that I keep open all the time and check in on frequently. These include email and RSS, but then all the other things that we check in on all day long, like web site comments, your work chatroom, Google chat, and so on. The more of these you have, the less you can concentrate on the task at hand, especially once you get into ones where you can spend lots of time using each day, like Friendfeed, Facebook, and MySpace. So is Twitter worth the time investment and the fact that using it means that you will have one more tab open all day long everyday (or a desktop client/iPhone app)? It must be to some people, but I'm guessing a lot of people just enjoy the distraction. So who is getting real value from Twitter right now?

1. Anyone with a large number of followers If you are kicking out your thoughts and links to, say, 5000 people multiple times a day, there is clear value in that for you.
2. People using it to gain access All of a sudden we have a way that is faster and less formal to get in touch with CEOs, thought leaders, (internet) celebrities, etc., and you have a better chance of getting a response than an email.
3. People expanding personal brands ... though you generally had to have one already- we aren't seeing Twitter celebrities
4. Brands looking to gain access to people NYtimes, CNNbreaking, NPR, Woot, etc

Are you on that list? If you are not, then you are really just using it to stay connected. I prefer my RSS reader for that sort of thing, but that's just my personal preference. So while there are undeniably ways to get value from Twitter, it's not clear to me that a whole lot of people are getting a good return on their time investment. I'm going to keep thinking things over, but it seems like that same time is better spent on something like Friendfeed or working on my blog  (which, like so many others, has gotten much quieter since Twitter and similar services became popular).