Peter Kim tweets that Forrester Research has filled a vacant position and will soon be announcing an analyst to cover social computing. Who says Twitter is useless?
Carter's Analyst Twitter Directory currently lists 104 analyst accounts and that doesn't include the AR folks who also use the medium.
Personally, I find Twitter to be a very useful tool for my work - it allows me to loosely follow several analysts whose work is highly relevant to my clients, thus keeping an eye on their current research interests and allowing me to flag interesting developments. I'm then able to act where necessary using more traditional communications methods (is it correct to refer to the phone and email as 'traditional', I wonder?).
Yes, it's not all serious, yes I admit that I do tweet about rugby matches that I'm watching and yes, I have been known to tell my 81 followers what I'm eating. No, it's not everybody's cup of tea.
Nobody's forcing to anybody to sign up. All I'm saying is that I find it helpful.