Social Media Statistics Australia – March 2013

Today is Easter Monday and whilst a public holiday time to post our monthly stats for March.

We are starting to get to a point in Australia where social media growth is slowing and for some sites, static. We see larger sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and blogging platforms driving much of the engagement.

In Australia both Facebook and LinkedIn publicly share their users numbers with the media. I have been asking Twitter, via Twitter – if they could share their stats with us in regards to Australian user numbers. I didn’t get a reply after many attempts, and wrote this article about the @TwitterAU account.

Twitter finally got back with the following reply in regards to this tweet I have been sending @TwitterAU:

I do find this hard to believe, but moving on. Because Twitter don’t give us any indication on Australian users numbers we get an estimated figure based on the total Twitter user base of 200 Million Active users according to their Business site.

March 2013 Stats:
(figures below are Australian User accounts/ or Unique Australian Visitors (UAVs)

1. Facebook – 11,489,600 Australian users/accounts (down approx 188,080). We suspect this is continued efforts against spam accounts, some people deregistering.
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (steady)
3. Blogspot – 3,000,000 (down 200,000)
4. WordPress.com – 2,900,000 (up 250,000)
5. LinkedIn – 2,757,000 (up 357,000)
6. Tumblr – 2,600,000 (down 200,000)
7. Twitter - 2,167,849 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
8. Instagram - 1,083,924 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
9. Flickr – 850,000 (up 20,000)
10. Pinterest – 640,000 (up 30,000)
11. Google Plus – approx 340,000 (my estimation)
12. MySpace – 300,000 (down 10,000)
13. Yelp – 220,000 (steady)
14. Reddit – 170,000 (up 10,000)
15. StumbleUpon – 95,000 (up 5,000)
16. Foursquare – 51,000 (down 2,000)
17. Digg – 33,000 (down 3,000)
18. Delicious – 31,000 (down 1,000)

Australian Twitter User Numbers

Facebook announced they have 1.06 billion active users.

Australia has 11,489,600 / or 1.08% of the total global user base.

According to Twitter’s Business Portal – they now have over 200,000,000 active users.

1.08% of this worldwide total = 2,167,849 monthly Australian users. As mentioned above Twitter do not have Australian numbers to supply us.

Australian Instagram User Numbers

Instagram recently announced they now have 100 million active users world wide. Therefore 1.08% of this equals 1,083,924 Australian users.

This is very much my estimation and if anyone can help further, please contact me. It’s important to note Facebook is well establish across the world, whereas Instagram isn’t as established in non western coutries with lower smartphone uptake. This is worth considering when estimating the Australian Instagram user numbers.

Facebook Penetration in Australia

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Population clock – the population of Australia on 31/03/13 was approximately 22,980,000.

Facebook has 11,489,600 users out of a total country population of 22,980,000. This means almost 50% of the Australian population is signed up to Facebook. A phenomenal stat considering those under 13 are not allowed to sign up.

Key Points to Note:

• WordPress has seen some increases recently as Posterous shuts down and people migrate their blogs
• LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blogging platforms still popular in Australia
• Facebook consistenly gets around 11.5 million Australian users to their site every month
• Noone is really sure how Google Plus is going in Australia. It seems to be a business orientated network but doesn’t have the level of interaction like LinkedIn or Twitter.

Like our stats? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

You are welcome to share and post our stats on your site via Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 3.0

Stats courtesy: Quantcast, Comscore, Google Ad Planner tool, Google Trends, Facebook Self-Serve advertising tool, Vivid Social Research Division. Figures correct as of 31/03/13.