AR&D Reinventing Local Media

UPDATE 4/30/09: Nielsen responded quickly to this issue, and has released new numbers that include the use of "Twitter Client Apps." I have updated this story in a blog entry.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE FROM 4/29/09: A new blog entry from Nielsen suggests that Twitter is having a hard time keeping new users active. Nielsen Online reports that, of the people who sign up, only 30 - 40% come back by the following month. But we have found a significant piece of user data is being overlooked - one that will surely skew the overall numbers. On the Nielsen Online Blog, David Martin, Vice President for Primary Research writes that, while Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months, it's having a hard time getting people to return to its site within a month. However - this raised a big question. Did Martin including the people who use Twitter via a "Twitter Client," such as TwitterFeed, TweetDeck and other mobile apps to post?

No.

What's the big deal? According to TweetStats, 40% of the "Top 10 Twitter Apps" are from services other than Twitter. This is the equivalent of measuring YouTube users without measuring those who watch embedded YouTube videos on other sites or mobile phones.

Martin freely discussed this with us, and says he hopes the data is not misleading.

"For this (study), we took a narrow focus on the twitter.com domain. Any comparisons we made were also to the Facebook and Myspace sites. We have the ability to look at data for applications, and that's a follow-up we're absolutely going to do. We don't do retention metrics yet into tweetdeck, but we'll produce it in the coming weeks."

I asked Martin if he thought the study of Twitter client apps could change the overall data.

"I don't think there's any question that it's going to supplement that number. The big question is -- will that retention number appear on the same level as MySpace or Facebook?" said Martin. " Maybe they (Twitter) do have the potential to explode into a huge reach property."

This is a significant element to the story. As you can imagine, the story is being blogged (and Tweeted) like crazy. But the stories and blog entries are repeating the topline data. Some writers are using this as proof that Twitter has passed its peak. That's just not the whole story.

However, even if the addition of Twitter client data only adds a bit to the site's overall numbers, we have to keep in mind that Twitter is a different entity altogether from MySpace or Facebook. Those are social networking sites, and they give users a reason to keep coming back throughout the day. Twitter is something different: it's not about the mass number, it's about a piece of your overall strategy.

The retention rate issue is no different than when tons of people who started blogging, only to lose interest fast. When there is new, hyped technology, everyone wants to try it. After a while, only the dedicated followers stick with it.

Martin says he will write about this soon. "You really have to do your follow-up, and we intend to do that."

I hope his follow-up will get as much attention as the original blog entry. We need all the facts before we can decide if any service is right for local media companies.