Andrea DiMaio

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Andrea Di Maio
VP Distinguished Analyst
12 years at Gartner
25 years IT industry

Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software… Read Full Bio

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Twitter’s Low Retention Rates Teach Governments A Lesson

by Andrea Di Maio  |  April 30, 2009  |  2 Comments

A recent research by Nielsenshows that Twitter’s retention rates are around 40 percent, which is on the low end for social media. While Twitter still is a relatively new phenomenon and its growth rate remain impressive, the study casts doubt about its long-term sustainability.

Irrespective of whether one agrees with this research or not, this should make government organizations think carefully as they develop their social media strategies. While a government presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr look inevitable, each of these mainstream tool may become less relevant or morph into something very different in the future.

Government organizations should not commit to any of them: presence on social media is strategic, but their choice is tactical.

2 Comments »

Category: social networks in government     Tags: , ,

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Bruce Robertson   May 1, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Agree it’s tactical. No one (public or private sector) should fixate on any single social network (or networking approach). Use them all as needed.

    Still, the retention rate issue may be a red herring — many joined just because of Oprah. It’s funny to hear my sports radio guys trying to explain what Twitter is when they want to tell everyone that a basketball or tennis player is tweeting during an event (and then of course say it’s a bad thing!). Overall, usage of Twitter is still going up, but like all things, it may not ever cover everyone. So what? Use it anyway for those that prefer to hear this way.

    My county (Fairfax, Virginia) tweets and I follow them – and on big meeting days there are too many coming in for my taste. Still, I appreciate that they can notify me of bad storms or swine flu issues this way (I don’t have to remember to check their web site, they push to me). And, it’s so lightweight — it keeps my government intrusions down to just 140 characters per. Which is what we all want, right? Less government?

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