Twitter ‘needs to improve user retention rate for massive success’

Twitter will need to improve its user retention rate if it hopes to achieve huge success, it is claimed.

At present, more than 60 per cent of users do not return to the social networking site the following month, according to David Martin, vice-president of primary research at Nielsen Online.

Equating that to a 40 per cent retention rate, he suggests such a performance will limit a website’s growth to some extent.

He explains: “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.”

When MySpace and Facebook were similarly emerging sites, Mr Martin adds, they were achieving retention rates that were twice as high as Twitter’s.

In other social networking news, an industry expert has welcomed the recent move by Facebook to allow its users to vote on the site’s governance issues.

Rachel Hawkes, co-founder of the Social Media Portal, stressed the importance for sites to gain the trust of users because people like to feel in control of their personal data.