What advantages did the united states gain from these acquisitions?

    
Aside from the territories of Spain at the time, Guam, Philippines, and others that were defacto colonies leftover from the once mighty Spanish colonial realm, the US gained an appetite for imperialism.    
One can say that these acquisitions meant that we were now not merely a northern America western hemisphere power but on our way to a global imperialist one. Given our meddling in the Pacific ended up leading us to fight and die against Japan, Korea, and Vietnam in the future, when we had an entire North and South America to play with, one might say that taking those territories were more detrimental than positive for the long term sake of the US.