Alight for a while, Twitter birds

BY: NICK IANNITTI  |  The Future

Today, Adweek posted an article about some recent Twitter stats. According to Nielsen, only 40% of new Twitterati are still on the perch a month later.

From the Mike Shields article:

“Over 60 percent of people who sign up to use the popular (and tremendously discussed) micro-blogging platform do not return to using it the following month, according to new data released by Nielsen Online. In other words, Twitter currently has just a 40 percent retention rate, up from 30 percent in previous months — indicating an “I don’t get it factor” among new users that is reminiscent of the similarly over hyped Second Life from a few years ago.”

Twitter’s been huge in the business and social media enthusiast community for quite some time, but with recent buzz reaching a fever pitch, the mainstream is registering with the little bluebird in droves.  The growth chart, as Adweek puts it, looks like a hockey stick.

With over 60% of new users flying the coop, however, there’s something amiss.  If it hopes to improve its retention rate, Twitter needs to address the mainstream users that are signing in and asking “Why is this better than Facebook? All my friends are already there.”

The fact is, some of the most intriguing aspects of Twitter don’t necessarily come through immediately: the flattening of the online landscape, the ability to engage with spontaneous chat with an open community–including with some of the world’s most admired or influential people.  On the surface, a new user is presented with an opportunity to search for their friends (many of which will likely not be present) or simply begin ’shouting into the darkness’ (as the folks at SuperNews so poignantly put it), all the while wondering if their time couldn’t better be spent on their existing networks.

The fact is, Twitter is an excellent supplement to one’s existing networks, and can serve a very different purpose than Facebook, but for someone not willing to blindly jump into the community and start sharing with strangers, the existing technology of Facebook status updates work just as well, and in a place where the user is already at home.

Put simply, what Twitter needs to do is sell its benefits better on its own site.  Relying on word of mouth between evangelists has been wildly successful thus far, but with the growth curve bending every skyward, the mainstream audience registrants (who are missing the wealth of blog posts extolling Twitter’s many virtues) require a refreshed explanation that’ s more than simply “mom wants to know what you had for lunch“.

Celebrity tweets can only go so far, after all.