Twitter's user loyalty always been lower compared to other social networks

According to analysts, research has suggested that more than 60% of Twitter users stop using the social network within 30 days, most of whom use it for commercial gain.

As you can see from the above graph, at this moment in time Twitter has a retention rate of 40% demonstrating that over 60% quit the micro-blogging service, for most they have had enough of the facebook shortened micro blogging service.

Twitter could have a bigger retention rate if it wasn’t for the high profile sign ups including Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey who sustain much of the typical user’s time in which they see what the celebraties are up to. Oprah Winfrey quite recently made a statement conveying her trust in Twitter, boosting traffic towards the 40% retention mark.

Retention rate half as much

The micro-blogging service, that enables users to post a message in 140 characters, popularity seems to declining as it was almost a short term thing. Worryingly, the above graph also demonstrates that at the same time, Facebook and Myspace had retention rates much higher and now stand at almost double, 70%.

However, researchers have not taken into account the retention rate coming from widely used third party applications such as Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck, which incidentally half of the twitter population use meaning the retention rate for the whole of Twitter would be much higher, whereas traffic goes straight to the other social networks like Facebook, as there are no other third party apps available.

Twitter has bigger retention rate than analysts originally anticipate excluding 3rd party apps

"I did it out of boredom," Mikeyy said. What could real hackers do if they did it for something else....

Twitter has fallen victim to the Mikeyy Worm for the fourth time.

The Popular Social Networking site, Twitter, has been struck by more protection schemes over the last couple days. Surprisingly, this time the worm acted differently as its aim this time was just to have some and mess about instead of more serious actions such as hacking into Twitter accounts.

The Worm who is referred to as, “StalkDaily” ripped through the micro-blogging service like lightening. Literally when a normal Twitter onto a twitter account that had been infected, their account would automatically post a “spam” message promoting Mikey’s site.

“StalkDaily” has already owned up to his actions, who has been identified as Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney and said he acted this way as an act of boredom.

On the Twitter Blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote,

“At about 2AM on Saturday, four accounts were created that began spreading a worm on Twitter.”

““From 7:30AM until 11AM PST, our security team worked on eliminating the vectors that could identify this worm. At that time, about 90 accounts were compromised. We identified and secured these accounts.”

After being hit hard throughout the weekend, Twitter workers had to work fast!

“Our team quickly pulled together and started fighting the attackers in real time.”

“Again, we secured the accounts that had been compromised and removed any content that might help spread the worm. All told, we identified and deleted almost 10,000 tweets that could have continued to spread the worm.”

Twitter will have to look at the codes carefully to stop anything like this occuring again as for Mikeyy or any other hacker, it could be easier to hack and worse than last time. As Mikko Hyponnen, chief research officer at anti-malware firm F-Secure attempted to call out to the Twitter public and suggest you shouldn’t just go on any link you see!

“This is not over, There’s going to be quite a few modified Twitter worms for a day or two. Be careful in Twitter.”

Surely, after the set of the attacks on Twitter, many users must feel the need to delete their accounts and go to other secure networks such as Facebook or Myspace.

If you have “Mikeyy” you should do the following:

-Clear your browser cache and turn off JavaScript.

-Log into Twitter and delete any messages your profile automatically posted that contain the word “Mikeyy”.

-You can turn JavaScript back on so you change your bio and URL, and reset your color scheme from your profile as well as Password.

-Finally logout and try and use a third-part application such as WordTwit or Twitterfeed.

*IMPORTANT* Do not Retweet anything whilst you have the worm

This deeply upsets me because for such a site with heavy traffic to be easily compromised, the security must get up to scratch otherwise no one will feel safe or ever will be safe on Twitter. Potentially this means Twitter could possibly lose everything, its users and everything it has worked so hard for.