You don’t have to have anyone following you on Twitter for people to read your content. Twitter is like an amorphous chat room. For example, if I write “I love OmniNerd,” anyone who is watching the term “OmniNerd” will see my post. I’ve found it quite useful for watching key words like “ruby” and “rails”. If someone says something really interesting, you can write to them, or simply follow them to see if they say anything else useful.

So unlike Facebook where your content is directed to people you know, on Twitter your content is directed to people looking for your content. Given that, tweeting to yourself isn’t optimal use, but it’s definitely contributing to the content pool that will be read. In other words, it’s much different than posting status updates on Facebook with no friends, which would truly be pointless.