TweetTwitter has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past month — and the odds makers in Vegas are taking bets on whether Twitter is here to stay or just another Oprah made fad.
If your getting ready to lay your money on “here to stay” consider the following statistic recently released from Nielsen:
Currently, only 40% of those that sign up for Twitter are still “tweeting” one month later.
This statistic is called retention rate. To put this into perspective, the current retention rate for Facebook is 70%.
The Technology Isn’t Quite Here Yet
Part of the difficulty in retaining “tweeters” is that the nature of Twitter is to update your status several times throughout the day. This requires the user to be in front of a computer to update status or to have a user-friendly hand held device.
Despite the ungodly amount of iPhones that have been sold hand-held Internet technology is far from commonplace.
Twitter Doesn’t SPAM Your Inbox – Maybe It Should
Facebook is notorious for sending you tons of email when your “friends” update their status or add a new application. Twitter sends far fewer emails.
This may change if Twitter finds that they can decrease “defectors” by sending more communications via email.
Something Must Be Done
If Twitter is going to become a power-house that can compete with the likes of Facebook, it must increase the retention rate. At some point there will not be enough new users to replace those that are defecting and Twitter will experience negative growth.
That being said, I have never seen Twitter as something that will appeal to the masses. I see it as a brilliant communications channel for those that are a bit more high-tech than the average computer user. I think the service will find its niche not in the majority but in a minority that find the service useful to them.
We have likely seen the highest rate of growth that Twitter (or any other website) will ever see. Now that the Oprah and Ashton Kutcher hype is over it is time to see what Twitter is made of.
Learn more here or sign up below
