Thanks for sharing your insights. I especially like this statement:

“I told my friend that he should use one account for all of his pipelines and people will follow him because of his authenticity. I told him to at least announce that it is him behind each of the accounts to be transparent and people will be able to follow the feeds that they want. Instead, he is using the different accounts to collect feeds and spit them out in one location. It’s a good idea but in the web 2.0 world, is this what we really want or need?”

Spot on!

Good job.

You are exactly right about twitter being like a website exclusively for facebook status updates. I’m pretty sure that’s either where the idea came from or if not, they came from the same thinking.
Twitter is a great tool but is only as valuable as you make it for yourself.
Here are some common uses and examples:
1) customer service – @comcastcares follows any conversation that talks about comcast and responds to them right away, thereby improving customer service. It is much quicker than waiting on hold when you call.
2) Personal network – By announcing what you are doing and where you are going to your network, you are encouraging your friends to participate in your life. There was one guy who was stuck in an airport for 12 hours and was going to sleep in the terminal when he tweeted and one of his followers offered her apartment just minutes away. These things happen everyday.
Another person went on vacation and forgot his laptop charger. One tweet and a few minutes later, he borrowed a charger from someone in that city.
3) busines – you can put a human face on a company which makes it a lot friendlier and a place that you would want to do business.

A few hours will not do it for you. If you use twitter regularly, you will start to get used to it and find ways that you can benefit from it yourself.

The trick is to build up a network of followers. You can do that by being interesting, adding value, pointing out great articles, websites, services, or anything you are passionate about.