Only 40% User Retention Rate for Twitter

Well that explains why no one follows me

Over at Mashable I came across an article talking about the statistics of the popular social network, Twitter. While there’s a large growth of activity on the site, it was recently reported by stat tracking firm Nielsen, that the retention of these users is going down. In fact, “more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month,” says Nielsen.

What’s my guess? Well a couple of things. One, spam and bots. Out of the awesome 16 followers I’ve had on Twitter, 4 of them were bots ‘looking for a good time’. But that’s not the big issue as you can just block the suckas and move on smiling, but being a lazy geek, it’s just so much hassle

The next reason I can sum up in one word…or name, even. Oprah….or Ashton…okay 2 names. But regardless, this goes back to the fact that Twitter is a social network, and you can follow whomever you want, but it’s your choice. So Oprah is on Twitter, whoop-dee-f***ing-doo! I suppose though, the native geeks who first started using Twitter back in 2006 feel Twitter has become a gimmick, which may be partially true, but you make it what you want it to be.

Well I guess that kills those two theories, but I do have one more that could explain the low retention rate. Obviously it is caused by the fact that the users leaving are not following me. It’s the only possible explanation! Or, I guess, it could possibly be the fact that everyone uses TweetDeck, or a combination of all of the above!

Well, I guess I’ll have to go tweet about this! Have a happy Sunday, everyone!

[60% of Twitter Users Quit Within the First Month] on Mashable