Twitter describes itself as a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. That’s the official description. Unofficially, many web pundits put Twitter in the category of micro-blogging. As name suggests, micro-blogging is a smaller version of blogging. You have a quick opinion about something and you want to blog about it in one or two line. Micro-blogging serves that purpose and so on Twitter. But, my question here is – What is Twitter? Just a micro-blogging service or more than that? If more than that – then what else it does?

There is an official answer from Twitter as what else Twitter can do. It says, Twitter is the best way to discover what’s new in your world. It could be used as a news aggregator, to develop business links, for social networking, etc. Check out more about official answer here.

When I evaluate Twitter, I find several interesting use cases:

Date Finder: This is a different breed on Twitter. Those who ruined Orkut, spoiled Friendster and Spammed Yahoo Chat rooms are here as well. They are categorically hunting for dating partners. Twitter is another tool in their never ending hunt.

Self Booster: This use case is mainly for celebrities, or so called celebrities. People from Hollywood, Bollywood, Media Houses, and other Web Evangelists fall under this category.

Ego Massager: Those who can’t find themselves in celebrity category but eager to be there, use this platform as their ego massager.

Chit Chatter: People who are bored from other services and need some change fall under this category. There are some other serious workers who find some time in their busy schedule and come here to have some fun.

Business-aholic: It’s raining social media experts, entrepreneurs and marketing gurus on Twitter. Bunch of jokers trying to be expert in their domain. They spend almost entire day on Twitter and claim to know everything, the the past of Twitter to the future of social media.

Apart from these serious categories, there are some not so serious use cases as well. I hope you are exploring something which is not listed above.

Happy Tweeting !