Social Media Statistics Australia – July 2012

We have compiled our social media statistics for July and have them to share with you today.

There has been some interesting changes recently in terms of social media user numbers. Facebook just announced last Friday Australian time that their social network now has 955 million monthly active users. In addition to this Facebook has 552 million daily users and also importantly, 543 million monthly active mobile users.

As always, we measure the stats and report them with the following priority:

1. Number of active Australian users going to that particular social network each month (this is often reported by that particular social network, or an estimation of global data)
2. Number of unique Australian Visitors (UAVs) going to that social network each month (this figure often comes from Google Adplanner)
3. User numbers reported by that particular social network or reputable source.

To recap, the most important figure for us is monthly active users on that social network. If we can’t get this figure then monthly active visitors to the site is a handy measurement, but of course we can’t always say every visitor is an active user. Sometimes social networks inflate their figures by telling us total user numbers but not all users may actually be active.

Social Media Statistics Australia – July 2012 

1. Facebook – 11,008,520 Australian users/accounts (steady) – 13 million UAVs according to Google Adplanner (users logging in from multiple locations – home, work, school etc).
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (steady)
3. Blogspot – 4,010,000 (down 10,000)
4. LinkedIn – 2,200,000 (up 100,000)
5. Twitter – 2,114,000 (new formulae, see calculation below)
6. WordPress.com – 1,600,000 (steady)
7. Tumblr – 1,200,000 (steady)
8. TripAdvisor – 1,060,000 (up 160,000)
9. Flickr – 820,000 (down 80,000)
10. Pinterest - 620,000 (steady)
11. Google Plus – approx 600,000 (see calculation below).
12. Instagram – 475,000 UAVs or 1.2 million using Facebook estimate, see calculation below.
13. MySpace – 390,000 (down 80,000)
14. Reddit – 150,000 (up 10,000)
15. StumbleUpon - 130,000 (up 10,000)
16. Digg – 77,000 (down 6,000)
17. Foursquare - 63,000 (down 1,000)
18. Delicious – 33,000 (down 14,000)

Google Plus user number Calculation

On Google’s recent earnings call, they reported that 250 million people have upgraded their Google account to use some sort of Google+ functionality and that they have 150 million monthly active users who use Google+ features.

Facebook now has 955 million active users and just over 11 million of them Australian, ie 1.51% of Facebook’s total audience is Australian.

If we take the 150 million monthly active users for Google+ and find 1.51% this comes to 2,265,000 people in Australia who use some sort of Google Plus functionality. But how many of these actually use their profile on plus.google.com ? Half of that number? Quarter? It’s any ones guess at this stage. I would say maybe 1/4 actively use on a monthly basis.

Twitter User number Confirmation

It is reasonable to speculate that Twitter has many mobile users that do not use the site on their PC. Google Adplanner only records website visits and doesn’t account for activity inside mobile applications. Twitter recently said they have 140 million monthly active users worldwide.

Using the Facebook formulae of Australian users being 1.51% of the worldwide total, then the Australian audience on Twitter is around 2,144,000 users. Google Adplanner has a figure of 1.8 million so this sounds right for web users and 2,144,000 being the total of web and mobile users.

Instagram User number Calculation

Again we will use the Facebook formulae of 1.51%. Instagram recently said they now have 80 million users worldwide.

Taking 1.51% being Australian, the figure of 1.2 million seems more reasonable. This is obviously a big jump from previous figures but I think this figure is closer than the Google Adplanner data.

To give you some more information about each social network, we have done another tally this month showing the rank of social networks by the average time on site users spent per visit (according to Google Adplanner).

Average Time per Visit 

1. Facebook - 21 minutes 40 seconds
2. YouTube – 20 minutes
3. Reddit – 18 minutes 20 seconds
4. Tumblr – 16 minutes 30 seconds
5. Pinterest - 13 minutes
6. MySpace – 12 minutes 40 seconds
7. Twitter – 10 minutes 50 seconds
8. LinkedIn - 8 minutes 50 seconds
9. TripAdvisor - 8 minutes 50 seconds
10. StumbleUpon - 8 minutes 40 seconds
11. Flickr – 8 minutes
12. Delicious – 7 minutes 20 seconds
13. Blogspot - 6 minutes 40 seconds
14. WordPress.com – 5 minutes 30 seconds
15. Digg – 5 minutes 30 seconds
16. Foursquare - 4 minutes
17. Instagram – 3 minutes
18. Google Plus – no data.

Key points to note for July 2012

• We continually refine our processes to bring more accurate Australian user numbers for mobile social networks like Twitter and Instagram
• Most social networks are seeing steady use and minimal rises at this stage
• It’s not all about the user numbers, time on site shows the level of engagement from users.

You can view our previous report from June, or our whole archive of stats since the beginning of 2011.

Feel free to post our stats on your site, if you link back to this page – 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 31/07/12.