Twitter Quitters Ain’t Surprising – It Takes Time to Get It
April 30, 2009 16 Comments
In case you missed it on Techmeme, Nielsen published research showing that 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month after joining.
60% !!
I heard this, and I’m really not surprised. It actually fits my personal experience. Before I got to this point…
…I really didn’t take to Twitter. I signed up on December 15, 2007. My first tweet was, “Trying to get warm-n-fuzzy about Twitter.” But really, I didn’t get warm and fuzzy. Take a look at the chart of my monthly tweets below:
I can tell you that the months preceding April 2008 were even lower. It really took me a while – September 2008 – to warm up. That’s 9 months. Why?
- Hadn’t figured out who I really wanted to follow
- I didn’t have a clear purpose for why I’d use the service
- Wasn’t convinced I had anything really worthy to contribute
Bit-by-bit, I figured things out.
Who I wanted to follow – people in my industry and job function, plus people who would educate me about social media.
My purpose got clearer – establish a voice in my industry, and share information (something I learned from Louis Gray).
I learned not to sweat the worthiness of my tweets early on. You really can’t find your groove without practice. I do sweat the worth of my tweets much more now. But that’s after a lot of experimentation.
Thoughts for Twitter Adoption
If people truly leave Twitter after a month and don’t come back, then there’s a lot of learning they’ll miss. Things that took me time to learn and get comfortable with.
But if the celebrities that people follow – actors, news and media figures, musicians, sports stars, authors, etc. – stick with it, then the awareness will continue along. And that awareness is the key to giving new users time to figure out how they want to use Twitter.
The Conversation