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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…

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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.

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