Is Twitter really the next Second Life?
In an interesting piece of research, David Martin of Nielsen Online has identified that over 60% of Twitter users don’t come back the month after they signed up. Twitter has a retention rate of about 40%, which is up from 30% from a few months back – so something must be working!
MediaWeek in the US likened it to the darling of yesterday’s news – Second Life. Remember that? How many of us logged on, only to get stuck in the first phase not working out how to get dressed or even walk without going through the nearest tree trunk?
The point is well made, because Second Life and Twitter are very similar in that they both employ appaling user interfaces. Hence the proliferation of third party applications like TweetDeck and Tweetlater that go to make the Twitter experience just that bit easier.
David Martin and his team have created a couple of excellent graphs that show the retention rates of Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.
What is clear is that Twitter has some way to go to play catch up. Again, whats the difference between Twitter, MySpace and Facebook? Well, on MySpace and Facebook you can do everything that you think you might want to, all from the one page. Whereas with Twitter, you need to use third party applications again.
So, perhaps Twitter is not the next Second Life, but until it improves it’s own user experience via the interface, I think it will struggle to really penetrate the online masses.
Don’t get me wrong, Twitter has proven to be an excellent communications media, it just takes a bit more work than most people are prepared to give it.
I would love to hear your views.
Filed Under: Digital Marketing
About the Author: 