I'm leery of calling "hype" on new technology simply because practical uses are not immediately evident.
I remember reading that most people in the late 1800's couldn't imagine an economy that was based on jobs that were not related to some aspect of farming...
Edit: In the early days of Twitter, most people couldn't think of anything useful coming out of tweeting 140 characters.
Pretty bad example. Twitter's been around for quite a while, and I still can't find anything useful to do with it. There's way more immediate benefit from owning a 3D printer, even at this stage, than a Twitter account.
Seconded. People say I don't "get" Twitter. I say, Twitter doesn't get it.
Not only is the community filled with conformist pop-culture freaks with IQs well below 100, but the entire system of followers and following is not efficient. The 140-char word count is not sufficient for a full thought; requiring the use of the Information Age equivalent of shorthand (I thought we got rid of this years ago).
When all is said and done, really, blogging is a far better solution.
Is it possible Twitter is a solution to a problem you're not facing, or even aware of?
And in a general sense: posting about how your life is so awful or how this song was so good or how x programming language is better than y programming language is not as good as z programming language, but n programming language has features that neither x, y, or z has and it's the END OF THE WORLD.