About a month ago, articles began surfacing about Twitter’s poor rentention rates after a Nielson Online survey found that a mere 40% of new visitors return to the site after signing up. This got me wondering…how is it that I’m so shamelessly addicted to Twitter, and yet over half of other “tweeps” in the “twitterverse” never make their way back to the site?

And then I remembered my first impression of Twitter. It was something along the lines of: “What’s the point of this? Is this just a bunch of little Facebook statuses?”

Who else felt this way? Apparently most people! Today I asked my followers…

And apparently I wasn’t the only one who just didn’t get it at the beginning…

I’m also finding that I have a hard time “selling” random people on the usefulness of Twitter. I’m commonly asked, “what is Twitter?” and even after explaining its benefits and how I use it to discover and share relevant information about my job, the world, and life, people just don’t get it.

So why is it that such a simple concept is so hard to understand? Are the “tweeps” who simply post about what they had for breakfast making it hard for new Twitter-ers to find use in the tool? Or is Twitter really just a fad, about to become the next Second Life? What do you think?