Socialesque Blog

Just read a post titled Research Questions the Long Term Success of Twitter and here are the points the author makes in support of his argument:

• More than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the free social networking site a month after joining, according to data from Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic.
• Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent.
• Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention for most of the past 12 months.
• A retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to a 10 percent reach figure over the longer term and there simply aren’t enough new users to make up for the defecting ones after a certain point.
• Both Facebook and MySpace enjoyed retention rates that were twice as high when they first launched and those rates only rose when they went through their explosive growth phases.
• Each of the popular social networking sites currently show a 70 percent retention rate.

While these might seem compelling on first glance I dont think that Twitter can be evaluated just on the basis of DUV and time on site. In fact, it is unique enough that Twitter must have its own engagement metrics. I look at services such as http://tweetstats.com/trends and number #tags and the frequency of #tags searched is what is more relevant. This is a classic example of using old metrics to measure innovations and then misinterpreting the results because

if something has just been invented then how can the technique / metrics to measure its success already be established!?

Twitter offers a great way to get real time update on what’s on people’s mind. As more people see that the more people will embrace it. A compelling value proposition that solves a problem is what makes a company successful. Twitter has that - MySpace and Facebook dont!

Posted on May 8th, 2009 under Uncategorized • Tags: Business Model, Facebook, Twitter. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback