In the wake of eMarketer’s suggestion that Twitter’s growth (U.S. adults) could nearly double to 20 million users in 2010, Nielsen has an interesting post suggesting Twitter’s growth could be stalling.
Nielsen based its thesis by looking at Twitter’s retention rates – the number of people who continued to use Twitter the month after they signed up. Neilsen found that only 40% of new users stuck around, which would keep growth to 10%. This is hardly the kind of growth one would describe as explosive, and it’s certainly goes against the grain that Twitter’s growth is unbridled.
Nielsen said:
“Maybe we’re jumping the gun. Twitter is still something of a fledgling, and surely some other sites that eventually lived up to Twitter-like hype suffered from poor retention in the early days. Compare it to the two heavily-touted behemoths of social networking when they were just starting out. Doing so below, we found that even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.”
Nielsen’s research is eye-catching and offers some much-needed against-the-grain thoughts about Twitter and how fast it’s really growing.
The only pushback I would offer is that Facebook and MySpace are probably easier services to keep using because they offer users a variety of things to do. Twitter, meanwhile, is a one-trick pony so that if microblogging doesn’t capture your imagination, it’s more unlikely that you’ll stick around.
3 Comments
The other key is the Twitter ecosystem keeps evolving, too. Twitter the Service hasn't changes substantially in the last two years, but Twitter the Culture has. People who gave up on it a long time back do find their way back to try it again, discovering that more people are using it in their social networks with better tools than they had when they left. The same will be true for all the people who just came on board to be best friends with Oprah.
It may be more accurate to look at those numbers and suggest that Twitter's adoption cycle is often quite a bit longer than with other SN. Despite all the help the 140-character constraint and simplicity of the service brings, members have to get over thinking of Twitter as just a broadcast of the mundane. Having an account already created makes it that much easier to join in earnest later.
I've noticed many of my old high school friends (from the 1980s) are going to Facebook when they start diving into social networks. Twitter is still a big conceptual leap.
Kevin,
It may be that Twitter's appeal is less board than Facebook or MySpace. That doesn't mean Twitter won't be hugely successful but perhaps not the 250 million users that Facebook has attracted.
Social Media growth is mainly driven by word of mouth. If you consider the Pareto Principle in this case, growth may jump when influential people in some geographical, community or business area starts recommending it.
Also you may consider that only a small fraction of the worlds population (<20%) is using the internet, especially in developing countries. Typically, in countries with weak economies, the available hardware resources for users is limited and I can not think if a service less demanding on hardware than Twitter is.
Given that influential people, especially among those not already using the internet, recommends that in their communities, the current growth may seem small. New services may emerge, too so microblogging/social media will be more fragmented. Twitter may not be the correct answer for everyone.