It is extremely useful for some of us who use social media that we receive timely reminders on a regular schedule admist the rest of our subscriptions. For example, I have a client on my computer which connects to both Facebook and Twitter, and distills all the news for me in one window which I can watch as it scrolls and I am doing useful work in another window. By this method I get updates from my friends, news headlines from my hand-picked sources, and spiritual guidance such as facts about the Saint of the Day from the USCCB.
To me, this is vastly preferable to maintaining a list of bookmarks which I have to open new tabs on my browser and check them for updates on a regular schedule. I don’t really operate my own habits on a regular schedule during the day. I fall behind on reading XKCD because I haven’t added it to Twitter yet (I probably can) and I forget to visit the website.
Eventually this trickle of information becomes a firehose, and we find ourselves needing to prune away some unwanted friends or Twitter celebrities who aren’t contributing enough to the mix, but to me this is the proper paradigm for breaking news and scheduled occurrences, which can be “pushed” to me rather than needing me to “pull” them down from the web.
Also, a Tweet is extremely lightweight. It can be received easily on a mobile phone or a low-bandwidth Internet connection. If you got a Tweet reading “John 3:16”, would you need to follow a link to read it? Much information can be conveyed in 140 characters that doesn’t need the baggage of opening a browser and slurping down gobs of CSS and images and popup ads.