Illustration by Bryan Cole / The Collegian

While the social networking site Twitter exploded with new users and grew 700 percent in last year, 60 percent of those new users didn’t come back the next month after they signed up, according to David Martin, Nielsen’s vice president of primary research.

Twitter’s retention rates are currently around 40 percent. Martin states that Facebook and MySpace both had retention rates around 70 percent when they began.

Jordyn Bsharah, English education major and Twitter user since December said, “People stop using Twitter simply because it’s just like any Web site. People typically sign up and are juiced about it at first and then slowly get distracted by other shiny objects.”

“I don’t think there is enough to do on the site that makes Twitter as addicting as MySpace and Facebook,” she said.

Martin said user loyalty could be a problem for Twitter because the number of people giving up outweighs the faithful users.

Some people don’t care to know constantly what people are doing and they aren’t enticed with constantly answering the question, ‘what are you doing?’ in 140 characters or less. Others enjoy seeing what’s going on in their friend’s life.

Pete Serrato, business major and Twitter user since early 2006, said, “Twitter is a great way to connect and build a community around values that you may hold and to share those values and ideas with others around the world or local community. Fresno and the Valley have a great community of Twitters.”

“Now that I am back in school, it has become difficult to do much twittering but I try to log-in once a week to stay connect with the pace of the local community. I just keep my twittering down to when I am home, at least most of the time,” he said.

There are so many Twitter clients to tweet from; SMS message, TweetDeck, TwitterFon for the iPhone, Twitter Web site, FriendFeed, Gmail gadgets and many others. Twitter and Facebook can even be meshed together where Twitter updates will automatically update Facebook’s status.

Even with the retention rates down, Twitter’s Web site can be slow and congested. Using another way to update can keep people from being aggravated with the Web site.

Celebrities seem like they’re taking over Twitter, but there are some celebrities that are staying away from it.

Actor Zach Braff, said in an interview with Time magazine, “I realize a lot of people are doing Twitter, I just don’t want to know what people are doing every single second of their day. I find it a little invasive, but people are into it. I don’t have the desire to send out messages all day long. That’s not me. I’d rather be doing something else.”

Twitter isn’t about sending out self-absorbed tweets, it’s a great place for social networking and gathering information. According to Robert Strohmeyer, from PC World, first time Twitter users just don’t get that the site isn’t supposed to be self-promotional.

If first-time users give up on Twitter, that’s fine because it’ll keep the Web site less congested for the committed users.

“Twitter is overwhelming at first for the simple reasons of ‘who do you follow?’ and ‘what do you say?’ If you are new to the service it’s not always an easy question to answer. It takes time to build a community around subjects and followers that are a value to you. It will not happen overnight but it does happen in the long run,” Seratto said.