Twitterpated

This is by way of Abject Learning. Someone needs to explain this to me: Twitter.

Wikipedia describes it as "a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send ... text-based posts, up to 140 characters long." It's like a minimalist chat room, but with thousands posting all at once. It's very strange. It's very large. And I may be the last person on the internet to know about it.

What do you do with this? What can you do with this? I'm puzzled and intrigued and would love to hear from folks who are using this for academic purposes or for any purpose for that matter. Please. Explain it to me.