Nielsen reports today that despite exponential growth at Twitter in recent months, the microblogging service retains of late only 40% of users. However the report points out, "...For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention...."
But how does this compare with other social media behemoths during their initial startup? Good question -- fortunately, Nielsen has the answer.
Source: Nielsen
From the chart here it looks like retention rates for Facebook and MySpace were much higher (about double) and grew as audience grew.
It may be too soon to tell how significant this is, especially given the recent spate of explosive growth. With each passing day, celebrities, companies, organizations and individuals wrestle with how to integrate Twitter into their overall media mix. It doesn't appear that Twitter is going away.
Still, Twitter may have to rethink some aspects of its model to try and retain users for the long haul -- like creative means of participation apart from the purely quantitative follow/follower approach, for example. If one is not built for self-promotion, the perceived pressure to attain thousands of followers to feel validated can be daunting and may help account for at least some of the attrition.
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