Canary in a coal mine?

Despite all the hard work by fad impresario Ashton Kutcher, the man responsible for the brief popularity of trucker hats, Twitter may be in trouble.

According to a study released by Nielsen, Twitter has seen low retention rates despite its explosion in popularity, and that could spell trouble for its long-term prospects.

“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty,” said Nielsen vice president of primary research David Martin in a blog post.

Less than half of new Twitter users in the U.S. return to the service the following month; more than 60 percent basically abandon their accounts after the first 30 days. And, although Twitter’s exponential growth is similar to other social media hits like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter’s retention rate does not stack up well.

 

Twitter doesn't stack up to Facebook or MySpace

“Even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high,” said Martin. “When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today”

The Nielsen study tells us that people are leaving Twitter, but it can’t tell us why. Perhaps, suggests Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy magazine, it is a question of context. In a recent blog post, Morozov uses the Twitter community’s reaction to the swine flue outbreak to illustrate its power to misinform.

“The ‘swine flu’ Twitter-scare has once again proved the importance of context — and how badly most Twitter conversations are hurt by the lack of it,” said Morozov. “The problem with Twitter is that there is very little context you can fit into 140 characters, even less so if all you are doing is watching a stream of messages that mention ‘swine flu.’”

In his post, Morozov posted a handful of tweets that ranged from simple alarmism (“could it be germ warfare?”) to woefully misguided warnings about not eating pork. (Note: Swine flu is not a food borne illness.)

Twitter’s usefulness has also been distorted. For example, Twitter’s role in organizing a Moldovan student protest in Romania was greatly exaggerated. The real organizer was decidedly old school: the secret police did it.

I asked a reporter friend recently how he felt about Twitter, which his organization has “strongly urged” its employees to use, particularly beat reporters.  I promised not to identify the friend by name; I doubt his company wants him publicly commenting about their policies.

“The idea is that we’ll be able to follow our beats better by keeping tabs on the Twitter feeds of people in our coverage area. One of my co-workers has already been using Twitter for months,” he said. “In general, though, he’s found it of limited utility for developing stories on his beat.”

“My other co-workers are skeptical of its value as a news-gathering tool. We haven’t seen any stories broken on our level with the help of Twitter, although we’re curious to learn about its utility as a search tool. None of us have so far followed our colleague’s lead in getting a Twitter account.”

Some big names – Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey – have proclaimed their fondness for Twitter, but time will tell whether they stick with it.  In the meantime, count San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson among those who are done with it.

“This Twitter crap, I’ve obviously got to stop because people are taking it too serious,” Wilson told the Mercury News.

He also said this: ” I’m not doing things like going toe-to-toe with a ninja. Find me a ninja, for one.”

I’m sure that’s the kind of thing that would make sense with a little more context.

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