Is Twitter the next Second Life?
By Andrew Heining | 04.29.09
Lance Armstrong loves it. Oprah’s all over it. Ashton Kutcher found a million people to follow him on it. Heck, Barack Obama used it to get elected president. So why is Twitter in trouble?
According to David Martin, Vice President of Primary Research at Internet traffic monitor Nielsen Online, the site suffers from a retention problem. From month to month, Nielsen data says, just 40 percent of Twitter’s users return to it.
The microblogging service has been the tech darling of late, racking up new users at a dizzying pace. When daytime diva Oprah became a user live on her TV show earlier this month, the site saw a 43 percent increase in traffic, Hitwise reported.
But the Oprah crowd – and thousands of new users like them – aren’t coming back nearly as often as they need to be if Twitter’s growth is to be sustained, writes Martin.
“There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point,” Martin says in his blog post.
In supporting his argument, Martin looks at MySpace and Facebook from when they were new on the scene like Twitter is now. This chart shows that at similar times in their lives, the two social networking giants had double the retention rates Twitter has now. And, as fans are quick to point out in fields of comments around the Web, Facebook offers so many more ways to interact.
Still, maybe numbers don’t tell the whole story.
As John C. Abell points out in Wired, people interact with Twitter in many more ways than just visiting twitter.com.
Cooks are publishing recipes 140 characters at a time, and ferries telegraph their comings and goings, and scientists use it to send telepathic messages, and guilt-ridden souls confess anonymously, and audiophiles turn it into a music discovery engine, and politicians are announcing their candidacies and even tweeting from the House floor, he writes.
As many of the its users are quick to point out, Twitter would exist even without the website – on mobile phones (the source of that pesky – or perfect – 140-character limit) and through standalone applications like Tweetdeck. And for those that “get it,” the service’s utility remains, regardless of numbers.
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2. Olivia | 04.29.09
I’ve been hearing about Twitter for months, and as a result of your story, I went to your Horizons Blog there. The concept sounds fun, but I have neither time nor interest in finding out what other (known or unknown to me) people are doing. I’m glad the retention rate isn’t high; maybe people have more vital things to do with their day. As for me, I enjoy “tweeting” with the lovely LIVE birds outside my window. 
3. Dan Robles | 04.29.09
There is an economic threshold below which people fail to organize, form groups, create and socialize because they are too busy trying to feed their family.
Social media has great potential to empower society and it’s collective knowledge to become tangible outside the construct of corporations and inside social media.
Unfortunately, social media could fail due to the economic forces that it seeks to oppose. The drop-off may be because many people are trying to hold on to what they have left.
4. Stefan Martens | 04.29.09
Glad you implictly pointed out that the 60% of non-returning visitors MIGHT use desktop- or mobile clients.
Check out what I think about the so called “study”: http://snipurl.com/h11dj
Feedback greatly appreciate. Only discussion will make us wiser ( still looking for an English quote here, kinda hard to find for a German student with not enough time on his hands to do some reseach on that 
)
Cheers,
STefan
5. Sean | 04.29.09
Unstoppable? Twitter is a glorified text messaging platform and a flash in the pan. WHen the VC money dries up, twitter will flitter away.
6. KSE | 04.29.09
I like Twitter, but communicating with it is slow compared to me and a full blown keyboard. I think it is of the most benefit to Artist for keeping their fans informed.
Or maybe it’s because I am so slow in sending text messages.
7. Steve Weber | 04.29.09
Most of the users Twitter is retaining probably access it through cellphones, iPhones, and other third-party tools like Tweetdeck and Seesmic as mentioned. Power users aren’t using the Web site. Still, the growth was like 78 percent in the last month? So the chart doesn’t begin to tell the story.
8. Shawn Reeves | 04.29.09
I especially like the last sentence of the article.
Some people don’t “get it,” so they might check it out then leave. I haven’t even tried twitter yet, because I am producing so much with those tools that I do understand, including, and this is why I find the title amusing, Second Life. Our reporting media are still stuck in a petty consumerism model of “this product has something for everyone.” I’m glad some people aren’t on facebook, some like me don’t use twitter, and some don’t come and bother us on Second Life. There is no universally useful application, not even e mail, not even the telephone.
I also would like to apply an argument I heard on the radio about facebook to twitter: The provider is not interested in providing a place for cooks to publish recipes. The provider is interested in making money, which, with a marketing budget and a growing staff, means getting people to get other people to use it. Social networking is a euphemism for viral marketing.
I was reminded earlier today that I started chatting using networked computers in 1987, using a tool called Relay (still in use but not by me for a few years, called Internet Relay Chat). Some of my early communications are documented, although I think none of the earliest. I wonder whether tweets get purged?
9. Derek Irving | 04.30.09
I think it’s all about who you follow. For me I’m looking for value, entertainment and maybe a bit of “hey what’s he/she doing interesting. Plus I actually like the fact of only 140 characters. This makes sure everyone puts the value / message up front. In fact if all of my conversations with other people we’re required to be 140 characters I’d get more done and have more time in the day. Less blah blah blah It’s quick and to the point. Think elevator speech in 140 characters.
10. Gwen | 04.30.09
I agree with Olivia above - leave the “tweeting” to the lovely, quieting sound of birds outside. Knowing what someone is doing is trivia. Let’s be Americans of a higher mentality than that and concentrate on uplifting, inspiring concepts and thoughts. Let’s spend our time arriving at our own decisions on the right way to handle global warming, Guantanamo, and other serious issues.
12. codemon | 04.30.09
As a user of Twitter since August, 2007, I find this application enhances one’s internet experience immensely. The entire concept is to discover new things and meet new people, so Twitter’s future success is guaranteed.
Follow Me: http://twitter.com/codemon
13. Eric Rice | 04.30.09
I’ve used both for quite a long time, and I’ve held the belief that there are plenty of cultural similarities between the two. Most amusing though, was when I did a find/replace on a Twitter article and replaced “Twitter” with “Second Life”. These articles can be recycled! http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df34w2w5_25hq5gcvcp
14. Joseph Kingsbury | 04.30.09
Twitter and Second Life in the same headline is about where the similarities end. Twitter’s numbers have only scratched the surface of overall Internet users and potential adopters. Two reasons they are vastly different:
- Twitter’s barrier to entry couldn’t be lower. Second Life’s was prohibitive.
- Twitter’s api is available to third party developers and growth as a result of applications has to be significant.
Twitter undoubtedly needs to monetize at some point but the variety of uses, as noted in the piece, point to a basic platform that could be built upon in endless ways.
15. @gilcarvr | 04.30.09
you can tweet outside with the birds… that’s the great beauty of it olivia, gwen and john…
16. Pat Kitano | 04.30.09
Simply put, everybody on Twitter understands how deceptively hard it is to understand how to use Twitter at first blush. The low retention rate mirrors the “I don’t get it” factor that immediately hits newbies.
Although the initial retention rate is low, Twitter is a simple application to eventually return to, and probably has a higher “adoption” rate after initiates finally understand its utility.
17. Aftershave | 04.30.09
I can see the use of Twitter from a marketing perspective, but for all else…how boring. I have better things to do with my life than to consume endless snippets of useless information.
18. sue | 04.30.09
twitter is great. we’ve had SO many people helping us promote http://www.iget2work.com (nothing to buy…just stories, humor and joblinks about being unemployed … no ads….nothing to buy….) without twitter we wouldn’t have had so much help and a few days with big 1000 hit spikes due to twitter.
don’t knock it. or maybe if you hate it, don’t use it! then we won’t see the fail whale as much!
good luck!
19. Regina | 05.01.09
What’s funny to me are people who simply poo-poo Twitter but haven’t bothered to try it.
I admit that I joined back in 2007, but I didn’t really use it much until this past March. Then I finally “got” it. I also think that, by that time, there were enough people that were interesting enough for me to follow. When I joined it was mostly dot.com people, and, while that’s fine, I was a student, a teacher and a writer (yes, at one point all three at the same time.) I didn’t care about the newest software development (I still don’t, to be honest.)
Now, there are politicians, journalists, recruiters (key as I’m looking for work), businesses, and entertainers, etc. on it too. I don’t follow everyone who follows me. But if someone does follow me and I notice that their page has informative or entertaining tweets, I’ll give them a try.
In terms of the actual Twitter.com website, I rarely go to it. I use TwitterBerry from my phone and Seesmic Desktop from my computer more often than not.
I think to understand it, you have to be curious. It’s not all laid out nice and pretty. You have to learn what the little signs are, what hashtags are, and you’ll still have stuff that happens that you need to learn. I had no idea what #FollowFridays was until someone put me on one of their lists and then I Googled it. For Twitter, like most social media, it’s learning by doing. For now, I’m enjoying it a lot.
20. Valiant Westland | 05.01.09
It may not BE “the next Second Life,” but it’s a darned handy way to let people know what’s going on IN SL! Personally, I prefer Plurk ( http://plurk.com/VWestland/invite ) It has all of the microblogging pluses of Twitter and a better threaded discussion feature that utilizes a horizontal time line of Plurks.
21. The Songnumbers Team | 05.14.09
We love Twitter and can live with the short downtimes…period. If someone comes up with a better tool, then we’ll all check it out, until then, thanks Twitter!
The Songnumbers.com Team
http://www.songnumbers.com
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1. Chris Desouza | 04.29.09
What Hitwise & Nielson fail to acknowledge is that Twitter will EVOLVE. Myspace became dormant. Facebook is clever enough to heed dangers which the new kid on the block presents.
Twitter is unstoppable.