There have been countless articles about Twitter and how you can use it for businesses purposes. Perhaps one of the best indications of how successful a particular technology is being adopted is to see the how it’s being used differently from how it was initially intended. Here are a list of 13 odd ways to use Twitter.

Monitor Traffic

You don’t need an eye in the sky when you have your ear to the ground. Commuter Feed lets you post traffic updates in your area. Looking forward to the London version, I wonder how many ways you can say “going nowhere”?

Personal Digital Assitant

How’d you like to have your own assistant? Well, using this guide, you can have your own personal digital assistant on Twitter. Sadly it won’t bring you that latte you wanted(yet).

Games

We have previously covered how Penguin books were using Twitter to create a type of alternate reality game. Ze Frank also came up with the idea for color wars. There is  another game on Twitter, where the aim is to send your messages as close to the maximum 140 characters allowed. Perhaps we’ll see a choose your own adventure game one day?

Write a novel

Have you always had a desire to write an epic novel? If you have, then it’s probably better to stick to using a word processor or typewriter. If you fancy writing flash fiction or very short stories, then Twitter is ideal. There are already a few examples of people using Twitter to write fiction. Will we see the next Hemmingway or Raymond Carver appearing on Twitter?

Read books

Have you ever wanted to read James Joyce’s Ulysses 140 characters at a time? Probably not, but this project tweeted an incredible 23,467 times to bring literary culture to the Twitter. There doesn’t seem to be any books being read at the moment, but hopefully the project will start up again (personally I would like to see Don Quixote).

Stalk/ Be Stalked

You haven’t made it until you have your own stalker. Using Mologogo you can let your contacts know your location. As I said to my ex-girlfriend, “it’s not stalking - it’s surveillance”.

Educational

Proving that the Internet can make you smarterer, here is a post that highlights how Twitter can be used in academia. There is also a good round-up of using Twitter in higher education.

Quit smoking

If you’re looking for a way to kick your smoking habit, then Qwitter might be the answer. You keep track of the amount of cigarettes you smoke everyday. You can view trends of your smoking habits over time.

Get answers

Like Yahoo Answers, you can ask and answer questions from other Twitter users. Mosio could come in handy if ever you’re in a pub quiz with any of my friends.

Fire Alerts

Credit has to go to the Los Angeles Fire Department for trying to reach out to the public using the available technology at their disposal. If you follow their updates you’ll receive regular updates of any fire alerts in the area.

Confess your sins

Are you looking for forgiveness or do you just want to get something off your chest? You can send in your confessions anonymously at Kosso.

Speech

This cool mash-up using Yahoo Pipes will enable your tweets to speak. It uses audio from Expressivo so you can hear your friends tweets.

Water your plants

If you’re a terrible gardener, you can now use Twitter to make sure your plants get enough water. This bizarre set-up will let you know when your plants need water and it will thank you later when you quench it’s thirst.

For more conventional ways to use Twitter, check out this excellent Twitter resource. Here are a couple of other unique uses for Twitter. What else have we missed? Are there any other odd uses of Twitter that deserve a mention? Leave your comments below.