Twitter aflitter with quicker quitters

Most people who use Twitter will be gone within a month according to newly published figures. Number-crunchers say the trend means Twitter’s past growth rate will be unsustainable.

The figures from web research firm Nielsen Media say that only 40% of people using the site during a month will still be using Twitter the following month. The firm’s David Martin says this retention rate is too low to allow Twitter to continue to grow significantly: “There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point.” He says that, based on the experience of other membership websites, Twitter will struggle to pass the point where 10% of internet users are members of the site.

Nielsen also noted that the retention rates for rival social networking sites Facebook and MySpace were constantly higher as they developed; when each had an audience the same size Twitter has now, 70% of users were sticking around from month to month (see Nielsen Media image below).

Perhaps the most surprising note from the figures is that for the 12 months leading up to Oprah Winfrey’s publicizing of the site, the retention rate for Twitter was just 30%. Logic would suggest an influx of users who have only just heard about the site through such a mainstream source would be less likely to stick around, not more likely. It could be that those who came in the Oprah bandwagon, reportedly in the hundreds of the thousands, haven’t had enough time to become bored with the site yet.

It’s worth noting that the retention rate covers all users, not just new members. So while the most likely explanation for Twitter’s low rate is new users joining up, taking a look around and getting bored, it’s also possible that established users may be quitting because they feel the site is losing its exclusivity.

There have been some questions about how the figures were put together. If, as some suspect, the figures simply come from visits to the Twitter website, they could be misleading: many users, particular established ones, use standalone applications to post and read Twitter messages.





Fear of Needles? Not to Worry, FluGen is Here!

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

It seems that there is a really neat technology out there that could make vaccination a whole lot easier.  Designed to reduce the pain and fear associated with needle injections, FluGen‘s novel immunization patch delivers the medication just below the skin in a convenient, one-time-use dispenser.

Flugen, a new vaccine delivery system

This reminds me of the “hypospray” devices seen in the Star Trek series.  Unlike the nanomolecule spray gun on TV, this new delivery method works more conventionally, embedding micro needles that you can barely feel into the upper layer of your skin.  The drug is then pushed out and the patch can be discarded.  It is currently in the pre-clinical stage of research.

[Designboom via Dvice]

Swine Flu Update: Disease Source Identified!

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Since the danger of swine flu has not yet abated, here’s some additional links and updates. First, if you would like to follow the latest official updates from the CDC, they’re on Twitter. In fact they just started using the #swineflu hashtag, how hip is that?

If you missed our big article from Monday, What is Swine Flu?, be sure and check it out. The comments have been very active too so don’t forget to read over those! I’ve been trying to field any questions raised by readers, so if you ask any now I’ll still try to catch them!

Also, I decided against a “doomsday scenario” type of post because there is already a ton of that in the media right now, but if you think that’s what YOU need at the moment, io9 has put together a good compilation of ways the world could end ala Hollywood.

Lastly, the cause for swine flu has been identified. We should have known all along:

[Picture source: growabrain]

Scientists create glow-in-the-dark dog

No, that is not a typo.

Scientists in South Korea claim they have used cloning to produce four dogs which can glow red in the dark. While it sounds like a wacky student prank, it actually has major implications for medical science.

The four cloned beagles look perfectly normal in daylight, but several bodyparts glow red in the dark, including the nails, skin, eyes and abdomen. The entire body glows under ultraviolet light. The effect comes from a gene which produces a protein which glows.

The project involved taking canine fibroblast cells, which appear mainly in connective tissue, and injecting them with a virus which inserted the fluorescent gene into the nucleus. This nucleus was then put into an egg cell from another dog, with this cell used in an implanted embryo.

The surrogate mother gave birth to six puppies, all of which glowed, and four of whom survived. The births took place in December 2007 but have only just been publicized, likely to allow time for the project to be reviewed and confirmed by third parties.

The project was led by Lee Byeong-chun, a professor at Seoul National University. There’s bound to be some suspicion over his claims given that he was an assistant to Hwang Woo-suk, a stem cell researcher found to have faked data in the past. However, Lee’s later work, including producing the first cloned dog, has been independently verified.

While the glowing is a (literally) visible effect, the key achievement is the transplantation of a gene with a particular trait. It shows that, in principle at least, it should be possible to insert genes related to human diseases into cloned dogs. This will make it much easier to use animals to research the effects of, and cures for, genetic conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.

[Pictures via AFP]

The Pizza Box of the 21st Century

I don’t know about you guys, but when I order pizza, it’s usually because my wife and I are feeling lazy. Oh we do make it ourselves from time to time, but washing the dishes after is kind of a drag and goes against the concept of eating pizza in front of the TV. That’s why this pizza box concept is so brilliant. Not only does it provide you with the plates and a storage box to put your leftovers away, but the whole thing is made out of recycled material. Isn’t that awesome?

[Via Asylum]