Nielsen Online just released a rather interesting study today, suggesting that 60% of Twitter users do not use the popular microblogging service one month after they sign up. The number was even higher prior to the "Oprah bump", in which the US talk show host demonstrated Twitter to millions of viewers, pushing the website into the mainstream.

"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," David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president of primary research, said in a statement.

"For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention."

The blogosphere, sensing blood in the water, spread the news in earnest.

Oprah, as it turns out, hasn't posted a Twitter message in the past four days and only has roughly 20 messages in the past two weeks. Technologist and former Harvard Business Review editor Nick Carr speculated that Twitter may become the "CB radio of Web 2.0". Meanwhile, Facebook, which has been lambasted for changing its user interface to mimic Twitter, shouldn't worry about losing market share to microblogging website, said Financial Times tech blogger David Gelles.

However, as some bloggers have pointed out, Nielsen's data - which they do not release the methodology for for propritary reasons - stems from return visits to the Twitter URL, not just the user base itself. Aside from some clever math, Nielsen's report shouldn't keep the brains behind Twitter awake at night.

Since the website launched two years ago, Twitter hasn't changed much yet it still managed to attract at the latest count around seven million users. So what if three million or so people try it out and don't like it? There's still a healthy amount of users actively frequently using the site, a base which marketers and advertisers can still tap into, whenever Twitter figures out a way to monetise the site.

Calling for Twitter's demise based on one single report is akin to having the opposing team muster a lucky goal in the opening minutes of the first half when you're already up by five. It's early days for Twitter and given the amount of publicity its garnered in the past few months,it popularity can only go one way - up.