Six out of ten Twitter users quit within a month

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 29 Apr 2009 at 15:03

Today's Twitters are often tomorrow's quitters, according to data that questions the long-term success of the latest social-networking sensation.

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More than 60% of Twitter users stop using the free social-networking site a month after joining, according to figures from Nielsen Online.

"Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40%," says David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president of primary research.

"For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah [Winfrey], Twitter has languished below 30% retention."

Twitter has enjoyed a recent explosion in popularity on the back of celebrities such as actor Ashton Kutcher and US talk show host Oprah Winfrey singing its praises and sending out "tweets" that alert readers to breaking news or the sender's sometimes mundane activities.

President Barack Obama used Twitter during last year's campaign and other prominent celebrities on Twitter include basketballer Shaquille O'Neal and singers Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus.

Twitter, as a private company, does not disclose user numbers, but according to Nielsen Online, Twitter's website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February this year compared to 475,000 in February a year ago.

But Martin claims a retention rate of 40% will limit a site's growth to a 10% reach figure over the longer term.

"There simply aren't enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point," he claims.

Martin says Facebook and MySpace, the more established social-network sites, enjoy retention rates that are twice as high and those rates rose when the sites went through their explosive growth phases.

Both currently have retention rates of about 70% with Facebook having about 200 million users.

"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty," says Martin.

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