Research group Nielsen said that Twitter’s popularity appears to be short-lived as the social network fails to retain most of its users after just one month of signing up.
A study conducted by Nielsen showed that roughly 70 percent of users who joined the free social networking platform quitted in just over a month after their first log-in with the micro-blogging site.
Nielsen Online’s Primary Research vice president David Martin said that the retention rate for Twitter users currently stands at less than 40 percent. He stressed that this is nothing new to the company, citing last year’s (pre-Oprah) data showing a dismal 30 percent retention rate.
Created three years ago, the San Francisco-based micro-blogging site had its share of popularity boosts with celebrity endorsers like talk show giant Oprah Winfrey, actor Ashton Kutcher, and basketball all-star Shaquille O’Neal.
Even US President Barack Obama utilized the technological advantage of Twitter in the 2008 presidential campaign.
But despite all the hype from celebrities, Twitter’s users began to spiral down, said Martin.
However, Twitter refused to provide the exact number of its users, making it hard for online research group to provide conclusion. But Martin argued that the number of online users has grown more than 1000 percent, saying that Twitter’s website posted more than 7 million unique “hits” two months ago compared to a “disappointing” 475, 000 visits last year.
The official said that the 40 percent retention rate only showed that low audience participation might decrease the online platform’s growth to more than 10 percent, which is expected to last for a longer period of time.
Nielsen said that Twitter has already seen the summit for the past few months following the celebrity hype. However, the low user loyalty will undermine its growth, the research group said.
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