There are of course many other ways to use the topic statuses. Your imagination is the limit. You the User define the topic statuses via an admin panel. You can turn the topic status on site wide or forum by forum. Permissions control who can update a topic status. The topic status will appear in the forum page for each topic or at the top and bottom of the topic page. Forum users are also able to search for topics and posts with a specific topic status.
The best way to get a feel for an example implementation of topic statuses is to check out our Simple:Press Forum V4 Beta Support Forum.
Look for Beta 2 of Simple:Press Forum V4.0 to drop in the next day or two.