Twitter isn't something that has easily identifiable uses outside of mass texting; however the platform itself -- once you understand what it does -- can be manipulated in many ways. Some of these take programming skills, but some of them have simple tools you can use. Here are some examples.

• The New York Times did a story where they aggregated Tweets from across the country during the Super Bowl and used timestamps to see what people were talking about. If you choose the commercials, for instance, you can see which ones had the most impact. See the story here.
• There are tools that allow you to track group Tweets, which means you can easily target and filter discussions while also allowing a broader audience to see what you are discussing. We use TwitterGroups for that in our class.