Twitter creator Jack Dorsey on user retention, Facebook comparisons

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey says the service needs to do a better job of hooking new users. Credit: carrotcreative via Flickr

The mastermind behind Twitter isn't denying that his website has a problem keeping new users. The issue came up in an April report from Nielsen saying 60% of Twitter neophytes don't come back after the first month.

Twitter is brainstorming ways to improve the service so newbies get hooked right away, said site chairman and creator Jack Dorsey over lunch in Washington, D.C., last week. The best way to do that is to connect users immediately with others they'll be interested in.

Dorsey's co-founder Biz Stone told The Times in February that the Suggested Users list that's presented to brand-new users is a step toward accomplishing that goal. A similar list was around in 2006 when Twitter launched.

The feature has skyrocketed the popularity of users who get that endorsement -- netting an average of 53,000 new followers in an account's first week since being featured, O'Reilly writes. But it's not the ideal solution for the user retention problem, Dorsey said.

"Our sign-up process is still fairly weak," Dorsey said. "It's not the best way to suggest people to new users because they're . . . not relevant to everyone. We just choose a random 20" selections from a pool of picks by Twitter staff, he said.

Grabbing new users from the get-go is one of the bigger challenges facing the company.

"It's a hard problem to solve," Dorsey said. "And the company is . . .

. . . just on the edge of doing something about it. But I think it happens through search, basically."

Twitter recently redesigned its home page to incorporate search, giving users a window into others who might have the same interests.

But Dorsey and his team are still focusing substantial effort on keeping the site working.

"We're still building the utility aspect," Dorsey said. "So we're still doing a lot of stability work. Along those lines, we want to sustain more people, so we need to work on the product to add features to promote more usage. And in order to sustain that whole thing, we need revenue at some point."

There's a social network that doesn't seem to be having any of those problems right now, though. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg says revenue growth is "really strong." It has more than 200 million active users.

Facebook has also come to resemble Twitter more strongly.

"We're definitely flattered because it is moving more into our direction," Dorsey said of Facebook's recent redesign, which emphasizes status updates. He said the changes seem to do a good job of simplifying Facebook.

"I don't think it takes away from Twitter," he said. "There's a few differences that are very crucial between Facebook and Twitter."

One difference is how users interact. Facebook often centers on real-world relationships. In order to receive someone's updates on Facebook, that person must first authorize you to do so. That barrier isn't there, for the most part, on Twitter.

"The other big thing is search," Dorsey said. On Twitter, "people are not only following people, but they're following topics. They're following locations. They're following keywords and hashtags and conversations."

"You can't do that right now on Facebook," he continued. "They may change the service again. They may get more and more close to what we're doing."

-- Mark Milian [follow]

Comments

[Julie Bonn Heath]

I admire Twitter for admitting that there is an area that needs improvement. It makes them so "human" and I appreciate that. So many companies will not admit it, much less address it, and it gets us all nowhere. If this is the only major issue with Twitter (given the explosive growth), I remain extremely impressed with the team behind it.

[Jessica]

It's amazing how twitter has become what it is today. Here's a funny blog post about "twitter enlightenment" - http://www.libertyinteractivemarketing.com/blog/10-steps-to-twitter-enlightenment/ - Enjoy!

[David Fisher]

This makes a lot of sense. I think we'll see a lot of those users return in 6-12 months, but overall it doesn't shock me that Twitter would have a lower retention rate.

I only know of a few people that have cast off Facebook, and they have done so very intentionally for various reasons. Yet, people just seem to drop twitter. The discovery of what your friends are doing is stronger on Facebook oddly enough, and the instant feedback and user interaction which is generally uncluttered by spam, marketing, companies and bullshit is nice.

I'm a HUGE fan of Twitter, but it does have its weaknesses. It's highly temporal in nature, and you have to actively pay attention to it. Facebook is easier to go back and look at things more on your time. No, its not the same "conversation" but most people aren't caring about that.

[Jody Cowdrey]

Great article!

Though Twitter is growing nicely, the average person has no idea why they should use it. It's strength is the ability to discover what a person is actually FEELING in an instant, and almost in real-time.

To retain users:

1: Integrate some sort of full featured search into the home page. Show people the strength of Twitter before they even sign up.

2: Get the Replies feature back up and running. People are voyeurs. Let them listen in.

3: Enable the "track" command again. This gives people a search feature they can use via SMS.

4: Overcompensate with infrastructure to handle additional users and features.

Easier said than done, but this would do it.

@VBJC

[Jessi]

Honestly, I think a great way to get retention would be to suggest people in the same region/city instead of celebrities. It is still a huge problem to find someone in your own city and that is how connecting works best: finding people in your area who are doing the things you are doing. Also, maybe asking you a few interests and then giving you people who have tweeted on that topic recently.

[Liz]

Twitter used to allow you to search people's bios to find other people with similar interests, in your occupational field or geographic area but it was discontinued because, Twitter said, it was being "abused" (?). They should bring that feature back and it would solve many of these issues.

Services like http://www.tweepsearch.com/ & http://www.twitterlocal.net/ have stepped in to the huge gap created when Twitter discontinued the search bio feature. Lucky for us, creating solutions to Twitter's issues is a cottage industry.

[Rafael de Paula]

Great article! Twitter is something completely different from Facebook, surely Facebook is trying to approach to twitter characteristics but will never be the same. It's good to know that Twitter is looking forward and planning the future. I think at the present it's time to forget the competition around services and to be a a huge team and develop great systems without the "war" in revolutioning the Web.

[Rob Freeze]

I find the mention of Facebook being similar to Twitter interesting. Most of my friends and family are not on Twitter but are on Facebook. When I explain Twitter to them they say, "so it's like facebook." And I explain basically what was mentioned here, where on facebook you interact mainly with people you know personally and on Twitter you are connecting with new people and groups with similar interests. Facebook has been doing a good job at incorporating the good ideas twitter has into their site.

On a different note - I love the graphic for this article - awesome

[Carri Bugbee]

I do a lot of Twitter training and one of the best things for newbies to do is to connect with people they know in real life (IRL). That will inspire them to be engaged FAR faster than following celebrities or other highly visible people. After all, you don't have to be on Twitter to follow the activities of famous people. You can just watch TMZ.

What makes Twitter immediately valuable to people is connecting with those they might actually converse with. But it's not at all obvious how people would go about finding people they know, and frankly, many people don't even set their profiles up to be found easily. Providing good instruction on the importance of setting up a findable profile (for example, city and state are essential - you can't use your iPhone address!) and then connecting people with tools that allow them to find their friends easier (Twitter should acquire some of the third-party apps that do this), would be the best way to increase retention.

@CarriBugbee
http://supportingcharacters.com