My co-worker said to me "I am getting sick of Twitter" - I understood. It felt like people were twitter crazy and the spammers has already invaded. Yes, the tool has experienced a meteoric rise. According to Google Insights (see inset chart),the term "Twitter" had gone from an index of 12 in January to 100 in April.
As incredible as this might seem, the rise of Twitter seems to have met a peak and started a decline in May.
Looking at the metric I wondered about the overall decline of Twitter. Apparently, I am not the first predicting the demise of the tool. Nielsen posted an article about the subject in late April.
The article points out that: "more than 60 percent of U.S. 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."
Even more alarming to me is that fact that there are so many new tools being built on Twitter's API. When you see Smashing magazine post an article called "99 Essential Twitter Tools" it makes me think we are already overboard. I don't have 99 essential tools. It is too much. Even worse, what will happen to these essential tools if Twitter goes away or closes their API.
There is a definite Twitter Tribe that feels like the tool is invaluable. When I suggested a Twitter-Free Friday, this is one of the responses I got from noted Visual Thinking Expert Dave Gray "@snookerwolf ha! You might as well suggest an alcohol-free Friday. Good Luck with that! :)"
It will be interesting to watch Twitter and see if it can continue the rise. If it does, who will be knocking at their door with a bag full of cash to buy the technology.
Don't get me wrong, I do like Twitter, but you won't hear a Tweet out of me tomorrow.
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