Social Media Statistics Australia – June 2012

It might be Sunday but today is the 1st of July and time to report our monthly Social Media Stats – looking at the most popular social networking sites in Australia.

To make these stats most useful we look at the number of Active Australia users on that particular social network. Some social networks release official figures in relation to their user numbers, but not all of these users are actually active (For example, LinkedIn in Australia said they reached 3 million Australian members – however 3 million Australian’s don’t go to the LinkedIn website every month. We obviously want to pick up on this discrepancy and report more accurate numbers to our readers). As social media watchers the most important figure is active users and the level of engagement.

So for the purpose of our monthly reports we look to show the stats in the following categories and in the following order of importance:

1. Number of active Australian users going to that particular social network each month
2. Number of unique Australian Visitors (UAVs) going to that social network each month
3. User numbers reported by that particular social network or reputable source.

Social Media Statistics Australia – June 2012

1. Facebook – 11,008,520 Australian users/accounts (up 40,400) – 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 (steady)
3. Blogspot – 4,020,000 (down 10,000)
4. LinkedIn – 2,100,000 (down 100,000)
5. Twitter – 1,800,000 (steady)
6. WordPress.com – 1,600,000 (steady)
7. Tumblr – 1,200,000 (steady)
8. Flickr – 900,000 (up 60,000)
9. TripAdvisor - 900,000 (new entry)
10. Pinterest - 620,000 (up 60,000)
11. MySpace – 470,000 (up 50,000)
12. Google Plus – 457,500 approx active users (up 126,164 – Estimated calculation below)
13. Instagram – 414,000 (down 9,000)
14. Reddit – 140,000 (steady)
15. StumbleUpon – 120,000 (down 30,000)
16. Digg – 83,000 (up 6,000)
17. Foursquare- 64,000 (up 7,000)
18. Delicious – 47,000 (up 11,000)

Google Plus Estimation

At the recent 2012 Google I/O conference, Google executives have told us their social network now has 150 million monthly active users. This is the first time Google has given us any indication on the number of active users on Google+.

In comparison, Facebook last reported they have 901 million monthly active users, with 11,008,520 being Australian users. This means the Australian user base accounts for about 1.22% of the global Facebook population.

Taking the same formula (1.22% of 150 million users) – the estimated number of active monthly Australian Google Plus users is around 1,830,000 users. As Google Plus is very US centric at the moment and most social media users in Australian don’t use Google Plus, I estimate the true figure of Australian Google Plus users is around 1/4 of the 1,830,000 – ie 457,500 users.

Other noticeable Changes for June 2012

• Flickr has seen a noticeable rise in user numbers
• Pinterest has also seen another rise this month
• Instagram is slightly down, but this is only measuring traffic to their website. I am confident Instagram mobile app users is growing month on month, but unfortunately there is no way to get the number of Australian mobile users (if anyone can – please contact me). Also the increasing integration with Facebook is certain to be adding more users.
• Myspace has seen a small rise in user numbers
• Facebook advertising tool has reported a small rise in user numbers

It’s clear from these stats, photo specific social networks such Flickr, Pinterest and Instagram are each growing their user base consistently. These shows the shifts in content users are absorbing. We are seeing a further shift away from textual based updates to photo and video based updates.

You can view our report for May or whole archive of Social Media Statistics to see previous data.

Feel free to source our stats on your site- please note our content is under 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 30/06/12.