20 Twitter Words for Tweap and an interesting article from eMarketer...all in one!
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Here's the article:
Beware the Twitter Flitterers MAY 6, 2009
Tweet today, gone tomorrow?
Callit the Oprah Effect. Or maybe it was all the publicity generated by theAshton Kutcher/Ted Turner race to reach a million followers. Whateverthe cause, there is a growing fear that the mammoth micro-blogging sitemay be overexposed, overhyped and underused. It is true that Twitter’s growth is skyrocketing. No one agues that.
eMarketer estimates (see Twitter Tally) there will be over 12 million Twitter users in the US in 2009, slightly more than twice last year’s number. But figures released by Nielsen Online suggest that Twitter’s retention rate is only 40%.
In other words, as David Martin wrote on the Nielsen blog,“Currently, more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return thefollowing month.”
Not so good.
Anyone on Twitter knows the site is quick to tell you when afollower signs up, but mum on signoffs. No one knows how many of theirindividual followers get bored and fall away completely. Most worrisome, however, is that at some point after theinitial hoopla dies down, and Oprah and Ashton wander away to play withthe next hot thing, there simply won’t be enough new users to make upfor defecting dilettantes and Twitter’s growth will begin to decline.
Twitter has another “problem,” too. Hot new technologies are supposed to be the purview of young,hungry-for-new-gadget, early-adopter geeks. Twitter doesn’t fit thebill.
According to comScore Media Metrix 18-to-24-year-olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are not driving Twitter growth—25-to-54-year-olds are. Specifically, 45-to-54-year-olds were 36% more likely than averageto visit Twitter, making them the highest-indexing age group—old byInternet standards—and 25-to-34-year-olds were 30% more likely tovisit.
“The skew towards older visitors, although perhaps initiallysurprising for a social media site, actually makes more sense than youmight think at first,” wrote Sarah Radwanick on a comScore blog.
“Withso many businesses using Twitter, along with the first generations ofInternet users ‘growing up’ and comfortable with technology, this is asign that the traditional early adopter model might need to berevisited.”
Several assumptions might need to be revisited. There is noquestion, Twitter is not developing in the same way as its socialnetworking predecessors, such as MySpace and Facebook.
The question is: Will the Twitter fad fade, or is a powerfullysimple networking tool only now beginning to find its unique audience?Only time will tell…
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