Twitter's chicks flying the nest

Twitter is facing an "uphill battle" to ensure that its droves of new chicks do not fly the nest without looking back, one expert has claimed.

David Martin, vice-president of primary research at Nielsen Online, claims that while there was no arguing that the micro-blogging site had grown "exponentially" in the last few months - due, in part to celebrity uptake - more than 60 per cent of US users fail to return to the site the month after signing up.

This means that Twitter's retention rate equates to 40 per cent, although this is an increase to the 30 per cent it had remained at for the previous year.

Mr Martin suggests that this sees the site's growth limited to ten per cent.

"To be clear, a high retention rate doesn't guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite. There simply aren't enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point," he notes.

One person in favour of Twitter as a social marketing tool is Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who recently asked why Yahoo! and Google had not also developed a service similar to Twitter's TweetNews.

Contact the experts at home james for Social Media services.