Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

  • Home
  • Travel
  • Yoga
You are here: Home / Archives for Twitter

A Perfect Twitter Moment — Not!

September 17, 2009 •

Despite hav­ing an iPhone app for tweet­ing, my per­fect Twit­ter moment eluded me. On the day I was dying to answer TweetDeck’s “what are you doing” ques­tion, I wasn’t car­ry­ing an iPhone.

Sev­eral Sun­days ago my hus­band and I were kayak­ing in the golden light of a late after­noon on Cape Cod waters. Sud­denly our zen-like seren­ity was shat­tered by the ear-split­ting roar of a 747’s jet engines.

To our shock there was Air Force One, [Read more…]

User Retention Problems at Twitter?

April 29, 2009 •

Nielsen Online announced today that their research shows that 60% of Twit­ter users stop using it the fol­low­ing month. That is, Twit­ter’s “audi­ence reten­tion rate” is 40%, con­sid­er­ably less than Face­book or MySpace’s rates were at sim­i­lar stages in their life cycle.

Source: Nielsen Online

Source: Nielsen Online

Based on his­tor­i­cal pat­terns for other social net­work­ing sites, this implies, says Nielsen, that Twit­ter’s reach will ulti­mately be lim­ited to only 10% of con­sumers online:

To be clear, a high reten­tion rate doesn’t guar­an­tee a mas­sive audi­ence, but it is a pre­req­ui­site. There sim­ply aren’t enough new users to make up for defect­ing ones after a cer­tain point.

Need­less to say, the debate rages on at Nielsen’s blog, at AdAge and other places fre­quented by mar­keters and media pro­fes­sion­als. Some of the com­ments are quite emo­tional, par­tic­u­larly those sub­mit­ted by Twit­ter enthu­si­asts.

Some peo­ple ques­tion Nielsen’s stats, say­ing they under-rep­re­sent peo­ple who use Twit­ter via Tweet­deck, Tweetie or other third-party tweet­ing tools. Nielsen counter-argues that as long as those peo­ple visit Twit​ter​.com at least once a month, they’re included in Twit­ter’s user base stats. (Speak­ing for myself, I hap­pily use Tweetie — but do in fact visit Twit​ter​.com at least once a week.)

Pretty much every­one agrees: the issue is not the plat­form, but how com­pelling the con­tent is to peo­ple who exchange tweets or fol­low “broad­cast tweets” by celebri­ties or those with huge num­bers of fol­low­ers.

The other key suc­cess fac­tor is whether or not the con­ver­sa­tion is stim­u­lat­ing or rel­e­vant for you per­son­ally, the peo­ple you fol­low and those who fol­low you. (This is why I argue you need a crit­i­cal mass of like-minded peo­ple to make Twit­ter’s ser­vice com­pelling.)

For me the jury is still out…

Spam Management in Twitter Needed

April 27, 2009 •

After just a week’s expe­ri­ence with Twit­ter, I can see a real need for a spam fil­ter­ing mech­a­nism (like Akismet for Word­Press). The ratio of spam to good tweets is already bad, and get­ting worse every­day — and that’s after just a brief expe­ri­ence with the ser­vice.

If not addressed soon, this could be the Achilles’ heel for main­stream adop­tion of Twit­ter as a highly val­ued com­mu­ni­ca­tions plat­form.

In the mean­time most of my friends don’t use Twit­ter today, so it has min­i­mal value to me on a per­sonal basis… It’s like the early fax machine mar­ket: you can have the best fax machine in the world, but if the peo­ple and com­pa­nies you most want to reach don’t yet have fax machines them­selves, you can’t com­mu­ni­cate.

Net­work effects, in other words, as applied to each per­son’s own net­work. You need a crit­i­cal mass within your own net­work to real­ize the ben­e­fits.

Twitter: Too Much of a Good Thing?

April 14, 2009 •

Has Twit­ter reached its peak of suc­cess, and is it head­ing now for the trough of dis­con­tent? Has it been over-hyped? I find myself won­der­ing.

Pos­si­ble signs of trou­ble: [Read more…]

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

© 2020 by Christine Thompson. All rights reserved. • Log in