Twitter, A Flash in The Pan?

Have you joined the Twitter Craze? It seems like anybody who's anyone is Twittering. You have people who share their Twitter List and those who extol the virtues of Twitter. Fayetteville Alderman Matthew Petty, who Twitters during council meetings, is even trying to require the city to use Twitter. While Twitter has enjoyed a recent explosion in popularity just how many people are really using it? From Reuters,

Data from Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic, found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the free social networking site a month after joining.

I can understand why people drop out it after awhile, it's extremely time consuming. I wonder about all these people Twittering. Do they have a job? Do they work for employers who don't mind that they spend time Twittering? I've tried to follow a few people and discovered that I just don't have the time. There are just too many other things to do and I just don't have the time to Twitter. It seems other people are feeling the same and Twitter may follow the path of many other fads.

But Martin said a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site's growth to a 10 percent reach figure over the longer term. "There simply aren't enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point," he said in a statement.