Twitter Quitters: Around 60% twitters fly away every month

Twitter’s monthly user retention rate is just 40%. In other words, of all the Twitter users in a particular month, about 60% of them do not return the following month. The data was released recently by Nielsen Online- an Internet traffic research service.

clip_image002

Twitter’s monthly user retention rate is just 40%. In other words, of all the Twitter users in a particular month, about 60% of them do not return the following month. The data was released recently by Nielsen Online- an Internet traffic research service.

The Pattern

If you take a closer look at this chart that compares Twitter loyalty against Facebook and MySpace loyalties, you will observe that the 40% retention is, in fact, the maximum when plotted against the internet reach. Nielsen research also suggests that for the last one year, the retention rate has been hanging below 30%.

clip_image004

The significance

As per Nielson, the retention rate of 40% will limit the site’s growth to a 10% reach figure, over a period of time. See the chart below for details:

clip_image006

Trivia

  • Twitter’s website had more than 7 million unique visitors in February this year as compared to 475,000 in February a year ago.
  • Facebook has a retention rate of about 70% with around 200 million users.

(Charts: Nielson)

(Sources: Reuters, Nielsen)