Nielsen Online Tag

Senior Citizens Use Social Media & Web Too

Have you ever heard someone say they are too old to figure out how to use a computer?  As a 22 year old, I find it hard to imagine life without a computer, since I’ve always had one in the house since about 3rd or 4th grade.  I know we were one of the last families in the neighborhood to get one.  My brother, sister and me were definitely brought up in a different age than my parents.  While my mom became accepting to the computer, my dad says, “computers are the end of the word as we know it!”  Asking my dad to find the power button on a computer is impossible, which is why I was flabbergasted to learn that my 15 year old brother taught him how to text.

While my dad is more than a decade and a half away from becoming a senior citizen, a new survey recently showed that seniors enjoy using the internet, and some of their favorite sites include Facebook and YouTube.  Nielsen estimates that today nearly 17.5 million seniors are active on the Internet, which is up from 2004, when it was estimated only 11.3 million seniors used the internet. (more…)

Study Indicates a Rash of Twitter Quitters

While a staggering amount of people seem to talk about Twitter, the latest polls and research indicate that talk is about all that Twitter can muster nowadays. According to these latest numbers, the hype surrounding the microblogging site is far exceeding the practical rate of usage.

To that end, a study by Nielsen Online determined that over 60 percent of new Twitter users quit using the site after only one month. Put another way, the retention rate for the site hovers around 40 percent. To put that dismal number in perspective, other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace boast a retention rate around 70 percent.

All the dedicated Twitter users, however, look for hope in the facts. After all, no one can deny the impressive rush of people who signed up for the service. But even these numbers can be viewed as troubling statistics for Twitter. After all, other social networking powerhouses also experienced explosive initial numbers. But unlike Twitter, they were able to hold onto their users.
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