To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

In my line of work, I feel like I'm running into Twitter references everywhere. It's in the trade journals, the daily emails, referred to by various news programs, and of course used heavily by celebrities. Based on the prevalence of this new social media forum, I have decided to run a test with Twitter to see if I can figure out what all the hype is about.

My initial impression is that it's like Facebook status updates without all of the other Facebook features. Going in blind, it seems like this format is really nothing more than a monumental time suck - who really cares what you're doing at every moment? Do people really follow all the mundane information of day to day life that closely?

At least with Facebook, there are direct ways to interact with the rest of the network - conversations, even short ones, monopolize the home page allowing people to not only know what's going on but to be able to respond. It seems like this would be a more satisfying experience compared to sending random bits of information out into cyberspace...

So clearly, I've got a bias for which social networking site I think I'm going to prefer. Maybe it makes sense, since I'm slowly but surely moving away from the demographic most likely to use Twitter and Twitter-esque communication. But before I make a final judgement, I'm going to see what it's all about.

Anyone have thoughts one way or the other on Twitter-mania?