Twitter continues to grow at a rapid pace, and yet new research from Nielsen Online indicates the microblogging phenomenon faces an uphill battle in maintaining consistent use by millions of its users.
The research firm found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month. During the past year, Twitter has only maintained a 30 percent retention rate.
In other words, the mass of new users isn't large enough to make up for the large group that is defecting or losing interest.
For good measure, Nielsen compared Twitter's early days to that of MySpace and Facebook. Even when those two social networking sites were just emerging, their retention rates were twice as high as Twitter's, according to Nielsen data. Both Facebook and MySpace now enjoy a retention rate of 70 percent today.
