Twitter has swept the country like a good-old fashioned Rubik's Cube in 1983. But will Twitter have the staying power of the ubiquitous toy or the XFL?
A new report put out by Nielsen Media Research suggests that the Internet phenomenon may turn out to be just a fad.
Apparently about six out of 10 people who start a Twitter account fail to come back the next month. That means people may be signing up because it's the "in thing," but forgetting about their accounts once the luster is gone.
From celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher to big companies such as CNN and the New York Times (and, well, us), Twitter has become the hottest craze on the web since, well, Facebook, which surpassed MySpace.
While popular, it remains to be seen whether it can sustain its current levels.
"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty," according to Nielsen Wire. The report also states that during similar periods of early growth, Facebook and Myspace had a user retention rate twice as large as Twitter, which, among other things, allows users to send messages up to 140 characters at a time.
A blog commenter on Nielsen Wire had this to say about Twitter.
"Great article!," wrote David. "I signed up on Twitter a couple of months ago and I have been on it sparingly since. I really do not see what the big deal with Twitter is. Myspace and Facebook have a similar "status update" section and Twitter took it a step backward and created a "status update" only website. Twitter is great for this generation of narcissism where so many people out there think we actually care about what they are doing right now."
