Awesome Web Apps: Twitter
Although I'm still not completely convinced of its value yet, I include this app because I've been using it frequently. It's basically a more versatile and complete version of Facebook's status updates. Yet it is used for so much more than just letting people know what you're doing. Ideas get communicated and turn viral. Companies use it to see when people talk about them. Other companies use them to keep their customers informed or even for recruiting. Some have even started novels through it one sentence at a time.
The most characteristic feature of Twitter is its 140-character limit on everything you write. This constraint forces users to focus on writing in a short and concise way. Another aspect I have enjoyed about Twitter is finding authors of some of the blogs I read daily and subscribing to their Twitter feeds. It tends to be interesting to see what they have to say.
Twitter is a form a micro-blogging and does not take up much time (unless you feel obliged to share every minuscule detail of your life). So go ahead and give it a try. Maybe after a week you'll still see it as a useless distraction. But maybe after a week, it will become an important communication tool. Try it out!