Is Twitter here to stay?
There’s some interesting research out this week from Nielsen Online, a website monitoring firm.
According to them, most people who join Twitter don’t stick around: they leave inside the first 30 days, never to return.
Twitter is undoubtedly the Internet phenomenon of 2009, thanks in part to celebrity twitterers Barack Obama, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross. But as 60% of people move on in such a short space of time, is it a case of ‘tweet today, gone tomorrow’?
It highlights a problem that Twitter has, and raises a question of the micro-blogging service, namely: What’s the point? This is certainly a view shared by other WebEden users after we announced WebEden had joined Twitter a couple of months ago.
“Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest.” said David Martin of Nielsen Online.
However there may be light at the end of the twunnel (!) The retention rate for those people who are coming back the following month is actually going up – from 30% to 40%. That’s still way down on the 70% enjoyed by services like Facebook and Myspace, but its going in the right direction.
“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,” Martin added.
For our part, Twitter seems like a great service if you are a complete fan of someone, a band or a company, and you want to have a personalised dialogue with them. But as far as we can see, Twitter is just being jumped on by companies looking for a cheap way to reach new customers. And there’s an awful lot of tweeting going on, but is anyone actually reading those tweets?
If you fancy getting involved you can always follow WebEden on twitter.
Do you see any point? Leave us a comment below.