Social Media Statistics Australia – August 2012

We have compiled our social media stats report for August and now have them to share.

Over the month of August we have had a close look at the social networks and general user engagement. Many of the newer players such as Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus are now getting settled and we are not seeing hypergrowth type user registration. We however do still expect to see a lower level of continued growth over the coming months.

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.

Social Media Statistics Australia – August 2012

1. Facebook – 11,500,000 Australian users/accounts (up slighly – as reported by Facebook Australia Cheif, Liam Walsh) – 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 – 4,000,000 (down 10,000)
4. LinkedIn – 2,200,000 (steady)
5. Twitter – 2,114,000 (new formulae, see calculation below)
6. WordPress.com – 1,600,000 (steady)
7. Instagram – 1,283,500 using Facebook estimate, see calculation below (475,000 UAVs)
8. Tumblr – 1,200,000 (steady)
9. TripAdvisor – 960,000 (down 100,000)
10. Flickr – 820,000 (steady)
11. Pinterest – 620,000 (steady)
12. Google Plus – approx 600,000 (see calculation below).
13. MySpace – 390,000 (steady)
14. Yelp – 192,000 (new entry – yelp.com.au and yelp.com AUS figures)
15. Reddit – 150,000 (steady)
16. StumbleUpon – 110,000 (down 20,000)
17. Digg – 77,000 (steady)
18. Foursquare – 63,000 (steady)
19. Delicious – 30,000 (down 3,000)

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 has recently reached 85 million users worldwide (August 2012).

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. Yelp – 3 minutes 40 seconds
18. Instagram – 3 minutes
19. Google Plus – no data.

Key Points to note:

• Most social networks are remaining steady in user numbers as reported by Google Adplanner
• Digg.com has had a major redesign (and change of ownership) and according to Alexa.com trafffic is down considerably. However according to Google Adplanner the Australian user numbers haven’t dropped off yet. We will keep a close eye on this and report accordingly.
• No official numbers have been reported for Instagram in Australia, so we have estimated using a Facebook calculation – using this formulae Instagram jumps up to spot 7.
• Average Time per visits have remained fairly steady for most social networks.
• We have added Yelp.com.au to the list which also accounts for Australian visitors going to Yelp.com. Yelp is a leading local review website with a presence in many countries around the world.

You can view our previous report from July, 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, Checkfacebook.com & official Facebook representatives. Figures correct as of 31/08/12.