Twitter Quitters

Now it looks as if Twitter users quickly lose their fascination with the service, according to a Nielsen Online blogger.

Writing on the Nielsen Wire blog, David Martin, the company’s Primary Research VP, says more than 60 percent of Twitter users stop sending tweets one month after joining the service, making its retention rate around 40 percent.

Okay, so maybe you’re thinking all the press during the past few months about Twitter is sure to help the service keep its tweeters. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

According to Martin, the 40 percent retention rate is an improvement from the previous year when no one was talking about Twitter. During the service’s pre-Oprah, pre-celeb days, Twitter held on to only 30 percent of its new audience.

Martin does qualify his hypotheses by saying a high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a big audience, but the Nielsen researcher also adds that keeping users from defecting is necessary for building a large user base. Martin also injects a bit of common sense – low retention rates often result in the number of quitters surpassing the number of those who stay.

But don’t write Twitter off just yet. Martin still considers the service a newbie in the social-interactive Web biz, a “fledgling,” as he put it, and says reports, including his own, of Twitter’s impending doom are probably premature.

However, he also points out retention rates for Facebook and MySpace in the early days were twice what Twitter is experiencing now. Furthermore, both Facebook and MySpace are experiencing up to 70 percent retention rates today.

Will Twitter survive its growing pains to eventually grow its retention rate? Martin doesn’t think so.

“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the past few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty,” wrote Martin.  “Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can.”

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