Twitter's Trough of Disillusionment: Here so soon?

After month's of fawning hype, Twitter is facing some criticism. Social media sites are kind of like night clubs -- their popularity waxes and wanes, and there's always a new "hot destination" vying for the limelight. In the end, participation trumps platform. The manner in which you consistently add value will help you flourish even as you add to and change the places you participate.

The inevitable Twitter backlash has arrived. Riding high on hype from Oprah and a the CNN-Ashton Kutcher race to a million followers, Twitter now faces disillusionment amongst early adopters, defecting newer users and once-fawning pundits. The hits are rolling in.

While Twitter Jumps the Shark the Cool Kids Jump to FriendFeed:

I’ve been pulling the night shift with the new baby lately, so I was up at 2am when Ashton Kutcher and CNN were in the heat of their battle to 1 million Twitter followers. That next day Oprah had her big Twitter show and sky rocketed the Twitter userbase by over 2 million people. Later that same night I watched Larry King interview Kutcher, P. Diddy and Jimmy Fallon about the wonders of Twitter. I thought this a little too well orchestrated and it seems I’m not the only one.

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Regardless if this was an elaborate publicity stunt or not, Twitter has begun to lose it’s luster. It’s no longer the next cool thing. Twitter was featured on Oprah, it doesn’t get much more mainstream than that. So where is an uber-geek/early-adopter to go when they want to socially network away from the maddening crowd?

The post goes on to talk about social media's next potential Bright Shiny Object, FriendFeed.

Many Twitters are Quick Quitters

Today's Twitters are often tomorrow's quitters, according to data that questions the long-term success of the latest social networking sensation used by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Britney Spears.

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.

"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," David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president of primary research, said in a statement.

"For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention."

By comparison, Facebook's retention rate, the article states, is about 70 percent.

And so it goes:

It seems ludicrous to think Twitter has already entered its Trough of Disillusionment when only 8% of 18-34 year-olds use the service. But it appears that the the Twitter Trough may be here.

The lessons for companies and professionals using social media are reinforced by Twitter's up-and-down travails: the platform you are on matters less than the strategy behind the way you participate. Add value, add value and then add value in the networks and communities you participate in, and you can successfully ride the fickle and fast-changing preferences of the social web.