60% Twitterers Become Quitterers In 1 Month

Nielsen has published a report that shows that 60% of Twitter users quit using the service after one month. This will of course make the day of Twitter’s critics that will be quick to point out that Twitter is facing an “uphill battle”, especially after the quick growth initiated by famous users like Oprah.

Even if the numbers are accurate, is this really a big problem? Sure some users are quitting, but it was true for blogging, so why wouldn’t it be for micro-blogging? It would be more interesting to measure the number of tweets or even pageviews, rather than measuring “only” the number of active users. While we don’t expect Twitter’s retention rate to ever equal Facebook’s, we think that the retention rate alone doesn’t tell the whole story.