Thursday, Apr 30, 2009    Text size: 

Twitter executives are looking at a dismal one-month retention rate. That measures how many people keep using one month after they sign up for it. According to ComputerWorld.com, only about 40 percent of Twitter users continue to use the service a month later.

Nielsen Online's David Martin noted that celebrity exposure has contributed to Twitter's recent success.

"People are signing up in droves, and Twitter's unique audience is up over 100 percent in March," he said. "But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest."

Most prominent among these celebrities is Oprah Winfrey, who announced her jump into the Twitter fray on her show. Tech analyst Sharon Gaudin noted that before Winfrey's endorsement, Twitter's one-month retention rate was below 20 percent.

For perspective, Facebook and MySpace both had one-month retention rates that doubled Twitter's in their early days. The companies now enjoy retention rates of approximately 70 percent.

Booble.com founder "Booble" Bob Smith told XBIZ he also doubted the site's long-term prospects.

"It'll get tiresome, get bought by Facebook and rolled into status updates," he said, referring to Facebook's Twitter-like status-update feature. "But it's huge now. I've have been meaning to set up an account myself. I'm not sure what they'll think of the boobs."

TopBucks sales representative Ronald agreed, suggesting that most people access Twitter through other providers instead of the actual site.