Twitter may not be as popular with users as the news has made it out to be, according to a new report into the global phenomenon.

Statistics experts at Nielsen Online revealed that while seven million hits on the website were logged in February alone, around 60 per cent of its users will walk away from the service within one month of registering.

This information, the company predicts, lowers the company's growth rate to around ten per cent.

Vice-president of primary research at Nielsen Online David Martin said of the trend: "Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 per cent.

"For most of the past 12 months, Twitter has languished below 30 per cent retention."

Nielsen aims to provide their customers with complete views of their markets as well as a much better understanding of their target audiences through insights, market intelligence and other advanced technologies.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.