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A new report from Nielsen Online suggests that Twitter hasn’t yet reached a level of growth that can sustain the service, according to the research firm’s mathematical model. Despite the explosive popularity of the messaging service, Nielsen data indicates more than 60 percent of Twitter users that visit the site in a given month do not return the following month.

"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," writes David Martin, vice president of Primary Research for Nielsen Online, in a company blog entry. "For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention."

To put that in perspective, when social networks MySpace and Facebook had the same amount of "Internet reach," as Nielsen calls it, both sites had a retention rate of about 60 percent. Nielsen measures both sites as having a retention rate of about 70 percent today.

Nielsen’s model that compares "audience retention rates" with "Internet reach."

Nielsen Online

Further, Nielsen’s model that maps audience retention rate to Internet reach suggests that sites with a 40 percent rate should experience a growth limit of about 10 percent Internet reach. "To be clear, a high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite," writes Martin. "There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point."

However, the nature of Twitter is a lot different than MySpace and Facebook, which both require users to visit the site to interact with it. Users can access Twitter via SMS or third-party clients on both the desktop and mobile smartphone platforms in addition to its website. In fact, we’d argue that the majority of traffic comes via these other methods and not via its site. Also, some of the users who don’t return could be spam accounts that Twitter has gotten more aggressive about shutting down. So Twitter may in fact have user loyalty that Nielsen’s methods don’t take into account.

Martin is skeptical that Twitter can sustain its recent uptick in growth without more user loyalty. "Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can," he wrote. But as anyone whose book has landed on Oprah’s Book club reading list or whose product has appeared on Oprah’s Favorite Things can attest, Oprah’s recent foray into using Twitter is likely the thing to kick the service into mass adoption territory.

Late last year, Google announced that it had reached a settlement with several major publishers that would end their copyright lawsuit against the Google Books service. The settlement would put in place an agreement between Google and existing copyright holders, and give the search giant rights to out-of-print and orphaned works—those for which the copyright holder cannot be identified. Despite the complexity of the settlement, it was on a fast track to approval, with a final thumbs-up scheduled for May. Now, it looks like a delay in the decision is inevitable as opposition to it seems to be rising and the Department of Justice looking into the antitrust implications of the deal.

A portion of the objections come from within the publishing community itself, where a small collection of authors and copyright holders have requested four more months to evaluate the proposed settlement before deciding whether to sign on to it. Google countered with an offer of a two-month delay. The judge ultimately approved a four-month extension.

The authors who sought the delay appear to be concerned about not having time to fully evaluate the details of the settlement, but there is also significant opposition to the deal itself. The technology blog at The New York Times notes that a number of academics have described significant objections to the terms of the deal. These attack nearly every aspect of the settlement, but focus on the fact that many significant rights appear to be transferred to Google under the settlement.

So, for example, the agreement as structured could essentially turn Google into the sole rightsholder for orphaned works, which would mean that anyone would have to negotiate with the company over the use of these works. Other objections focus on the fact that Google could control the sale and distribution of out-of-print works, even if the original author decided to release it under a more liberal license. Other recent objections suggest that the settlement, by giving the search giant control of how the out-of-print works are displayed, could allow the company to censor and selectively display these works, based on community standards or political concerns.

If those within the publishing industry are getting concerned about the power it grants Google, they’re not alone. Online sources of book material are also worried that the settlement is specific to one company; all others will have to negotiate one with the publishers on their own, without Google’s market power and, potentially, after the settlement has been put into action. These fears prompted the Internet Archive to file a motion in which it attempted to intervene in the settlement, which would make it a party to it. In a tersely worded order, Judge Denny Chin, who is overseeing the case, rejected this attempt. The group that attempted to intervene can file an amicus brief or an objection to the settlement, but they will not be allowed to become a party to it.

As if all of these issues weren’t enough, the Department of Justice may be getting involved. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the DoJ has been talking to the parties involved in the settlement due to concerns that the exclusive agreement would raise antitrust issues. Nobody was willing to go on record as confirming this leak, and there’s no way of knowing whether it will result in a formal antitrust investigation, but the mere threat of antitrust action was sufficient to get Google to back away from a potential deal with Yahoo.

So, the indications are that Judge Chin intends to keep the settlement between Google and the publishing industry, but is willing to give those parties the time they need to sort through its complexities. That suggests that anyone who is opposed to the settlement will either have to convince existing parties to the suit that it is not in their interests or convince the DoJ to start a formal inquiry—an extra four months certainly won’t hurt in either regard.