Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I have actually started using the Twitter account I set up years ago: @vicki. I'm not going to be pasting my (occasional) tweets here, and I do find the 140-character limit constraining. Maybe I should follow Natalie Reed's example and post actual paragraphs as multiple tweets.

So far I am following a not-actually-random mix of a few people I know (mostly through SF fandom), and things connected to one or more of science, space exploration, feminism, and atheism. I'm interested in connecting to more people I actually know, with the usual disclaimer that if you use your twitter entirely or mostly for interests I don't happen to share, I probably won't follow you.

And yes, this probably counts as mixing the streams a little more, given that my real name is right there in my twitter profile, but I'm not linking back to here.

Every so often, I get email telling me that someone is now following me on twitter. Presumably they did a search, since I haven't actually been using the account.

What I'm wondering is, for those of you who do use it, what about it do you find useful? Not "What, in the abstract, can it do?" but "What do you, someone I know who also finds LiveJournal at least somewhat useful or appealing, like about twitter?"

Also, how much time do you spend following people, and how often do you find it necessary to check in? (We'll get into questions of appropriate tools for posting and/or following later, if I decide I want to do either/both of those things.)