Get yourself along to
http://www.tweetdeck.com/ This is a great client to use. The Twitter website is useless on it's own.
Twitter is all about the searches. You don't have to be friends with many people to find it useful or interesting. In fact, it's not really about that at all. You do have your main followers, that can be friends, family, famous people (or fit birds yes) but the great thing about tweetdeck is that you can have a few other columns open all the time which constantly update when anyone uses the word you search for.
So for example, you might have a few searches running like, Clio, Iceland volcano, Manchester United. These will be constantly updating as people tweet about those things. It's like a live news channel from all over the world.
When Sheffield was flooded there were live updates coming in about which roads were blocked, which buses were running etc.
You see with Twitter, you tend to tweet stuff other people will genuinely find interesting, not that you just took a crap or that there's nothing on tv. It's about information exchange. That's why a lot of people say it's rubbish because they've got nothing interesting to say and they've not realised how to use it right.
It's really good once you get into it. Not better than facebook but just totally different cos its not really about what you're friends had for breakfast or how hung over they are.
Give it a chance, follow some people you're interested in and most importantly, use the SEARCH.
Add me if you like @mattfjohnson