On Twitter quitter...

Should it come as any surprise that more than 60% of twitters never return after the initial signup? I must be old school, even though I work in startups, and can't live without the net, both for work, leisure and daily essentials. But I have a busy schedule, and can't afford to have my time wasted. I spent upward of 10 hours a day in front of my laptop. Granted that I would scout for MTV from the 1980s and 90s for old time sake, most (if not all) of my activities, almost everything that I do on the web are essentials to me. But I stay on most with those sites that I need a service from.

I read news, lots of it. My usual stops are google news, New York Times, CNN, Sydney Morning Herald, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Reuters, with the occasional dose of Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and for easy read, The Smithsonian magazine. I love Fortune, but I don't read it online since I still enjoy taking it with me when I'm offline. As you can see, my morning is pretty busy reading, before I start my work. I usually cramp all the news within the first 1.5 hours, but would still stay on some of the sites (eg. google news) for any breaking news. I like the more passive way of retrieving news, rather than having a TV blasting in the room. I feel more in control that way.

And when my work day starts (usually around 8:30), I'm constantly on numerous technical sites for work. I'm also on Yahoo Finance and etrade throughout the day when markets are open, since I do trading on the side.

You see, if you want someone like me to be on all the time, you have to have the (good) contents to keep me sticky. Some might argue that following celebrity or tailing your friends' every move are reasons compelling enough, I beg to differ. I don't see why I have to know my friends steering at their coffee mugs doing nothing, or opening the fridge and found the milk gone sour. And maybe I never have any care for celebrity (I rarely read entertainment news), I don't see why I would be interesting in Oprah, Ashton Kucher, or some such.

So, to say that 60% of the twitter first time users never come back, I'd say, good riddance and three cheers to them. If twitters spend the time they twit to do some volunteering work, our society would have been in much better shape.