LloydsTSB's James Gardner has caused a bit of a stir with some provocative comments on his
BankerVision blog about the value of Twitter to banks. The Twitterati don't take kindly to criticism (constructive or otherwise), as I discovered personally a few months back when I made the
mild observation - in an otherwise flattering take on Twitter - that a number of early adopters from our Community seemed to have given up on the medium after only the briefest of flirtations.
It seems they're not the only ones. According to figures from the
Nielsen Wire blog, more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month. This is actually an improvement on previous 12 months pre-hype stats, when Twitter's retention rate languished below 30%. Compare this with the 70% retention rates
of Facebook and MySpace.
As Nielsen observes: "A high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite. There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point."
James compares the current craze for Twitter with the previous banking fad for virutal worlds. It's a fair comment that could be applied to other banking goldrushes in the past - such as PC and mobile banking in the 80s and 90s, and social networking in
the noughties (whatever happened to Fortis Bank's Join2Grow network for entrepeneurs for instance).
And just as the PC and mobile channel have enjoyed a massive resurgence, so too will the social media of today come to play a part in the banking network of the future. The Twitterati will just have to bide their time. Revolutions rarely happen overnight.