Nielsen Could Have Twitter’s Retention Rates Wrong

 Nielsen Wire posted a shocking statistic to its blog:

Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent.

The post also included a comparison of Twitter’s retention rate, compared to Facebook’s and MySpace’s:

But–and it’s a big but–did Nielsen fail to take into account that many Twitter users start off using the web site interface, then quickly migrate to a third-party application? That’s the suggestion Brendan O’Connell offered up.

A quick look at Twitstat seems to back up his theory. Twitstat is tracking over 200 different Twitter applications and, as the chart below shows, only 27% of Twitter users are using the web interface:

Of course, if we’re to question Nielsen’s numbers, we should also question Twitstat’s, but that 40% retention rate may not tell the full story.

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