A good example on when you would use functionality like this is when working with objects.

json_encode() will take a DateTime and convert it to:

{
    "date":"2013-01-31 11:14:05",
    "timezone_type":3,
    "timezone":"America\/Los_Angeles"
}

This is great when working with PHP, but if the Date is being read by Java.  The Java date parser doesn't know what to do with that.  But it does know what to do with the ISO8601 format...

<?php

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');

class Fruit implements JsonSerializable {
    public
        $type = 'Apple',
        $lastEaten = null;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->lastEaten = new DateTime();
    }

    public function jsonSerialize() {
        return [
            'type' => $this->type,
            'lastEaten' => $this->lastEaten->format(DateTime::ISO8601)
        ];
    }
}
echo json_encode(new Fruit()); //which outputs: {"type":"Apple","lastEaten":"2013-01-31T11:17:07-0500"}

?>