It is useful for keeping in touch with select individuals - which is mainly what I use it for. I do have my profile settings so that only those I've "friended" (see how it creeps into your vocabulary by creating non-existent verbs?) can see it. I also make use of custom lists because I figure my family couldn't care less about my kettlebell or other fitness activities or vice versa, for example. My actual posts only really deal with fitness and the occasional cool picture or sharing of a motivational quite. I will not get more personal than that as everything on the internet stays there. I've been more personal on TE than I've been on FB, but that is different, and there are topics I won't post about here for the same reason.

Haven't thought about using Twitter for news though, will have to see if that works for me. I tend to be too busy to pay much attention to the news and if I can get it from Twitter without a firehose stream of notifications then that might be a good approach.