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A major plus for Twitter is its non-commercial nature, with no advertising other than attempts at spamming which are readily visible and efficiently extinguished.
Twitter is random and unpredictable and very relaxed, embodying much of the spirit of what the internet should be about, bringing the world together in an organic and intuitive way. It's egalitarian ... messages rattle past from well-known figures eager to share their egos or ideologies with anyone who will follow. Twitter users seem very willing to share anything of their life in twitter space and this can be entertainingly voyeuristic or ultimately recognized as boring. A twitterer can tick all the right boxes - this person could have something worthwhile to say, but they don't, and are taken off the list, expelled from the fluid community.
Rather being a forum of conversation, Twitter is a constant flow of little gems of information, of the 'Hey, take a look at this!' nature in the form of links to a web page, image or story that has caught the user's attention. Much of what is linked to is probably of little interest, yet a lot of is. Twitter's a good place to drop in to motivate the thought processes.
Perhaps what some users find the biggest drawbacks with Twitter can be seen by others as its very point. Its transient, fleeting nature resembles a quickly flowing stream of ideas and consciousness that one can dip into at random, swim with for a while, then leave again. While some users appear to be online all their waking hours, most only log on and off occasionally.
The lack of threading of messages can impeded attempts at conversation, when responding to an earlier tweet a user is obliged to identify the original message within their limited character space.
Each of the many varied protocols developed on the Internet serves its purpose well - firstly newsgroups then email, message boards, instant messaging, blogs, social network sites like Facebook and MySpace, all have their roles to play. Micro-blogging, based on Facebook's 'Status Update' panel, is a new player in game which increasing numbers of Internet users are joining and finding it to be a worthwhile component in their daily computer life.
Twitter will never be a substitute for instant messaging programs which allow synchronous commmunication with great ease of use. But it does have its moments of dialogue and conversation.
A common criticism levelled at Twitter is that its very nature ('What are you doing now?') invites banality and trivia. This is readily solved by the user 'tuning' their online experience by being selective in the choice of followers and followings.