Do I need Twitter?

It's nealy 4pm and I've just gone to Twitter for the first time today. I have 90 new posts from the people I'm following — how many of them will be at all important? How many will be at all interesting? I think my answers will be, "few" and "even fewer." Which makes we wonder: do I need Twitter in my life? Let's go to the tweets:
• a link to a photographer's coverage of American racism. I'll look at that site.
• a link to the White Rabbits "Percussion Gun" because it has good percussion. (I listened. It does.)
• a friend bid us "goodnight, world" at 23:45 last night.
• news story links from Columbia Missourian and KOMU t.v.
• I actually re-tweeted a link about television news terminology

My assessment: there was more non-junk there that I figured. I could have spent more time reading the tweets if I had more time.

My verdict: I think I'll keep using it, but I should have it "on" all day instead of popping in once or twice a day. Trying to catch up on 90 tweets is hard. For me it's more of a social outlet, not professional one — it's fun to see what my journalism friends are up to. And I think that's a key comment: right now, the only people I know who use Twitter are other journalists.

Will the rest of the world catch up?
-Karen, aka uberscholar