Twitter Quitters Just Don't Get It

April 30, 2009— -- A Nielsen report this week revealed that Twitter has an uncanny knack for hemorrhaging users.

In fact, some 60 percent of new users bail on the service within a month. For those of us who've been tweeting for a couple of years, this isn't exactly a shocker. Many longtime users have gone through that initial period of wondering what, if any, use Twitter might be. And maybe it's better for everyone if those who don't get it refrain from tweeting until they do.

I typed my first tweet at 2:45 PM on March 15, 2007, punched in six more the following day, and then took three months off before coming back. And even after returning to Twitter that July, I didn't really realize what the service could do for me beyond broadcasting my latest blog posts to a modest circle of my friends and colleagues. So it went for another year or so before I had that ah-ha moment that opened the service up to me.

For about a year and a half, I used Twitter in the most passive way possible, letting it scrape my blog and tweet the latest headlines. It took me almost no effort, and reaped almost no reward. My tweets were infrequent enough to avoid annoying anyone (I think), but didn't likely contribute much to the Twitterverse.

Looking back, though, I suppose I probably should have held off on tweeting anything until after I had the epiphany that transformed my outlook on Twitter. Ultimately, it's better to be late to the party (or absent from it) than to unknowingly become that irritating loudmouth who constantly shouts nonsense to everyone within earshot.

In my opinion, the most commonly heard complaints about Twitter stem from a misunderstanding of it. Chief among these complaints is the utterly bunk assertion that it's just a whole bunch of people heralding the trivial events of their daily lives into the void. (i.e., "I'm going to the bathroom now!" or "Eating a yummy ham sandwich!")

Frankly, if that's how you're using Twitter, you're doing it wrong, and you should stop without subjecting your friends to a full week of that rubbish, let alone a full month.