Twitter users quit after first month

Over 60% of Twitter users abandon the microblogging site after the first month, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

The figures show that while Twitter continues to grow at an incredible rate, with usage up by more than 100% since March, the service fails to attract users in the long-term.

Twitter currently has a retention rate of just 40%, which indicates that some users aren’t understanding or enjoying ‘tweeting’, according to Nielsen’s study.

“People are signing up in their droves,” wrote David Martin, Nielsen Online’s vice president of primary research, in a blog post. “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.”

Twitter’s retention rate is only half as much as its rival social networking sites Facebook and MySpace during their first three years of existence.

However, despite its lower retention rate, Twitter continues to see its subscribers expand at a rapid rate, and accounted for more UK internet traffic than MSN UK Search in April, according to Hitwise.

This is mainly due its popularity with celebrities and media coverage – US talk show host Oprah Winfrey signed up to the service on April 17 and has racked up 680,000 followers, including Hugh Jackman who has 150,000 followers.

Martin said: “Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the past few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty.”