Social Media Statistics Australia – April 2012

Today we again report our monthly social media statistics showing the most popular social networks in Australia.

We see a continuous trend of new social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest growing fast, while the main players remain relatively steady. There is still much hype about Google+ and we have some updated numbers for the Australian market (based on international figures released by Google).

One point we are trying to get more accurate data on is the number of active users a social network has. Facebook recently said they now have 901 million active users so where possible we want to give the number of active users a social network has instead of just total user numbers.

If we can’t get actual user numbers or active users we get the number of Unique Australian Visitors to the site per month (UAVs). This basically tells us the number of Australian users visiting a particular social network over the last month which is handy in measuring trends and growth.

Social Media Statistics Australia – April 2012

1. Facebook - 10,988,140 Australian users/accounts (up 98,180) – 13 million UAVs according to Google Adplanner. The difference between the user numbers and UAVs may be users logging in from multiple locations – home, work, school etc.
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (up 1,000,000)
3. Blogspot – 4,000,000 (steady)
4. LinkedIn – 2,100,000 (steady)
5. Twitter – 1,800,000 (up 200,000)
6. WordPress.com – 1,800,000 (up 200,000)
7. Tumblr – 1,200,000 (up 100,000)
8. Google Plus – 1,100,000 approx active users  (Estimated calculation below)
9. Flickr – 920,000 (up 80,000)
10. Pinterest - 470,000 (up 120,000)
11. MySpace – 460,000 (down 10,000)
12. Instagram – 252,000 (up 42,000)
13. StumbleUpon – 150,000 (up 40,000)
14. Reddit – 140,000 (up 10,000)
15. Digg – 77,000 (down 8,000)
16. Foursquare – 63,000 (up 10,000)
17. Delicious – 43,000 (up 7,000)

Google Plus Estimation

Google has said 170 million people have now upgraded to Google+ and we estimate there are around 2.2 million Australian accounts. But the key figure we want to know with this number is how many are active users? Twitter recently got to 500 million accounts but only 140 million are active (28% of accounts are active). With Google+ in Australia we have estimated half of the 2.2 million account are active. There are absolutely no other Australian stats for Google+ so this is what we will estimate for now. I welcome any thoughts or comments on this point.

Other Noticeable Changes for April 2012

• Pinterest sees significant rise in visitors overtaking MySpace
• Instagram also has a noticeable rise in website visitors
• Social Bookmarking is getting a comeback? Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious rise
• Location services still growing with Foursquare increasing
• Top 5 social networks remain relatively steady
• Blogging is still big in Australia with million of us reading or writing on blogs

You can see our report for March if you want to check last months numbers. Do also have a look at our summary of social media growth in Australia over 2011 in our 2011 Annual Social Media report.  You can also view our whole archive of Social Media Statistics.

Feel free to source our stats on your site if you attribute us with a link back to this page, or our homepage – as per our Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 3.0.

Stats courtesy: Google DoubleClick Ad Planner tool, Facebook Self-Serve advertising tool and Checkfacebook.com. Figures correct as of 30/04/12.