OFF THE WALL: Why ‘logged-outs’ like myself are the bane of Twitter

By Daniel de la Rosa

I am what is called a “logged-out,” a Twitter user with an account, but does not really stay long on the site firing a series of 140-character tweets day after day.

I usually log in, post a few tweets on sports and some politics and then vanish for a month or longer. In short I’m an inactive, fly-by-night user.

‘Logged-outs’ like me are frustrating for Twitter advertisers because they cannot calibrate their ads to see what you like or what you tweet about. Apparently, there are several million of us who are fly-by-nighters. We follow a handful of friends, browse through a few tweets and that’s it.

I’ve gotten several emails from Twitter touting this and that new feature and asking me to come back. Problem is, I never really left. I’m around but not as often as Twitter would like me to.

I spend infinitely more time on Facebook.

I use FB to chat with friends halfway around the world. I get moment-by-moment updates from my brother who is going to be a first-time dad by September. Or my sister who tells me that the roof of her garage was blown off by the last typhoon. I see the pictures of a friend as she spends her last days in Los Angeles before relocating to Dallas. Another friend in Madrid cheers for his favorite soccer teams. FB is my social town hall when the World Cup played for a month and especially when the shock reverberated when Brazil was detonated by eventual champ, Germany.

I bought FB stock when it was below its IPO price of $38, deciding to go in after it reported quarterly results that showed it was starting to earn billions from its social media platform. Today, its revenues rose 66 percent in its last quarter, and stock analyst S&P expects the share price to rise over the next year to $89. The stock is trading around $73-$75.

Twitter also reported a good quarter, but I am just not convinced a site fueled on 140-character tweets and hash tags is a good investment for my retirement dollars.

As a Boomer, almost all my friends are on FB. In a way, I do not need Twitter in my life, but I keep it because sometimes I get the itch to rant and tweet. Since there are only a few hours in the day, and I don’t really have time to go on two social media sites, the more convenient for me is FB.

Twitter needs to do more to convince millions of fly-by-nighters like me to stay around much longer.

‘Off the Wall’ is a regular column on the stock market. The comments expressed here are the author’s own, and are not meant to recommend the buying or selling of stocks.