To Twitt no more
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Date Posted:
April-30-2009 11:16
42
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More than 60 percent of Twitter users stop using their accounts one month after joining, according to a report released this week.
The report by Nielsen Online shows that the micro-blogging site is having trouble retaining 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," said David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice-president for primary research.
Pics: Who is Tweeting now?Launch Gallery"Or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent," he said.
"Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months, with no small thanks to celebrity exposure," Martin said. No doubt he means Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher's very public use of the micro-blogging system.
"People are signing up in droves, and Twitter's unique audience is up over 100 percent in March," Martin said.
Martin compared the emergence of Twitter with other social networking sites Facebook and MySpace and said that the latter two had retention rates twice that of Twitter when they were starting out.
Do you have a Twitter account? Are you one of the 60 percent who signed up but have given it the flick? Who do you follow?