Three weeks ago, David Martin, Vice President of Nielsen Online, wrote a blog post titled “Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth” which positioned Twitter as a fleeting fad that can’t retain users. David wrote:

Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, 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. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.

What are these retention rates based on? Unique page views? It must be because David talks about users returning to the site. Well, I don’t know what your Tweeting habits are, but mine definitely don’t include visiting Twitter.com. I prefer to use the service through third party applications — TweetDeck is my application of choice — and I tweet daily.

Judging from this report, only 31.99% of users use the web as their Twitter client — EVERYTHING ELSE is either third party apps or services. Does the Nielsen report factor in these users? For a service like Twitter I think unique page views is the worst identifier of unique traffic. I mean one user could visit Twitter.com with 3 different computers from 10 different locations…not to mention the visits from a mobile phone.

David ends his post with this:

Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty. Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can.

Seriously? Oprah? She doesn’t even use the service correctly. Most celebrites don’t for that matter. I can only think of a select few off the top of my head who actually @reply and follow people back. If Oprah isn’t showing her users the right way to use Twitter, of course they’re going to be turned off. They’re not being given the opportunity to see Twitter’s full value.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the Nielsen ratings are correct or skewed beyond belief? Is Twitter just a fad or is it the beginning of a new way of communicating online? Please comment below.

Courtasy of @jakrose and Mashable I was made aware of a new iPhone audio app for Twitter.

Enter TweetMic. TweetMic satisfies the need for audio blogging through Twitter over your iPhone and the entire process is super simple. Press record. Talk. Tap record again. Add a cool message. Click Publish to Twitter. Wash rinse repeat.

Furthermore, the coolest thing about this already amazing app is that TweetMic doesn’t limit your record time. That means as long as your iPhone has enough memory to hold the file, you can keep recording. Everything is stored on their servers so there’s no need to worry about hosting costs.

Just think about the limitless possibilites of this application. Interviewing someone? Hit record, place the phone on the table and talk away. Driving and don’t want to mess around with typing in TwitterFon or Tweetie? No prob. Record away. And oh…you’re not limited to 140 characters.

Here’s what @LoriRedding had to say about it:

Currently the app is listed for only $.99. Go buy it. Seriously. Now, leave me a comment and let me know how you like it. Listen to the quality below.

TweetMic Test