Patch's Poll: How Do You Use Twitter?

According to Will Farrell, people use Twitter "because updating 100 times a day on Facebook is not socially acceptable."

But people use Twitter for a lot of reasons that go beyond the social. It's now often the first source for breaking news — much to the chagrin of the cable networks — and it has been cited as one of the driving forces behind the Arab Spring.

The six-year-old platform has more than 500 million users who generate millions upon millions of messages with 140 characters or less every day.

Some users are only interested in following celebrities or trending topics, while others use the platform specifically for business networking. But when big news breaks, the site  pivots to that purpose as many sources report what they've heard or seen until the picture becomes clear.

So, if you use Twitter, how do you use it? Take our poll and tell us in the comments.