I use twitter as a news aggregator, and to follow local tweets such as if the traffic sucks, or the weather is bad, or a live concert or a politician or reporter locally is an idiot. I also follow genealogy related tweets, some sci-fi authors, and many local artists.
I’ve engaged in 140 char at a time “debates” over issues in the city, sent people links to local resources that they may like - eg.) health food stores, local venues, companies that may help them. For example yesterday I had a debate over “rebranding” my city and the cities history as a cowboy town, and also talked with a local reporter who was seeking info for an article on working as a Santa/Elf for Christmas, retweeted a few funny links. Last friday as a snow storm was coming in, I could see almost all of the big downtown business were letting everyone out of work at noon, so when work gave us the go ahead to go when we want, I let everyone know they should leave ASAP to avoid the downtown traffic which would ensue at noon. Also, I used twitter to “watch” the Greycup game, when the tweets got interesting enough to warrent changing the channel, I did - otherwise, I could channel surf & not be too bored.
Facebook is a totally different experience for me, I keep track/stalk both old & new friends, arrange to meet friends, look at family & friends pictures, share my pictures of friends & family, share links I found elsewhere with friends who may find them interesting, and occasionally share a blog posting I have done. I do not add, nor talk to strangers on FB, but I will chat with them on twitter.
When I am waiting for files, or otherwise not engaged at work, I glance over to my tweetdeck & see if anything is interesting - most of the time, no, but once & a while - it can be engaging. Same goes for watching TV.
I have both facebook & twitter in tweetdeck, and my gmail notifier keeps me updated if I get any notifications on facebook which tweetdeck doesn’t pull in. If what I am watching or doing isn’t engaging, I have a possibility of an active outlet through either twitter or facebook at any time, unfortunately SDMB doesn’t have a feed I can plug in to Tweetdeck, but if it did, I would have all my web distractions in one app.