What? Say it isn’t so! How could Twitter be on the path to irrelevancy? After all, Oprah tweets so it has to be hot.
Twitter is one of the hottest, trendy sites ever with more and more joining every day but will that just mean a bigger fall for the giant?
Celebrity exposure for Twitter over the past few months has caused an explosion of traffic and sign ups there. Ashton Kutcher called out CNN and won! Oprah tweeted and many other celebrities launched themselves into the twit-o-sphere. I have a Twitter account. The list of top user’s at Twitter is a who’s who in the entertainment industry. The new members in March were up 100%.
So what could possibly be the problem? A quick look at the numbers provided by Nielson and the problem shines out like a beacon. The problem is Twitter Quitters. The audience retention rate at Twitter is abysmal. Not only that. It is getting worse, not better.
Prior to this celebrity surge at Twitter the users who failed to return the month following sign up (Twitter Quitters) ran about 30%. The number of Twitter Quitters has now surged to more than 60%. With that number of quitters future growth is simply not sustainable. The new members can’t make up for quitters.
What about Facebook? What about Myspace? They both had explosive growth and still retain popularity among members so why not Twitter? Well, when Facebook and Myspace went through their explosive growth there was one key difference. Their retention rates exploded along with the growth and hovered around 70%.
That difference is the key. Twitter has over 60% month over month Twitter Quitters. Facebook and Myspace have around a 70% retention rate.
Successful companies inspire loyalty from their customers. Twitter does not inspire that loyalty and it might be due to a flaw in the concept. A free platform to gain followers and send out tweets to them sounds great on the surface but people look for ways to profit in everything.
Twitter might be on a path to becoming a free platform to gain followers in order to send out tweets with affiliate and promotional offers in them.
