Australia Plateaus in Social Media Usage 2015 Statistics
Statistics gathered by Social Media Australia show growth in social media usage plateauing – although there are some surprises in the lower rankings.
WhatsApp Snapchat Tinder approach Twitter’s subscriber base in AU
Statistics compiled by SocialMediaNews.com.au for November 2015.
Social media statistics Australia – November 2015
Facebook – 14,000,000 users (steady)
YouTube – 13,900,000 UAVs
WordPress.com – 5,600,000
Instagram – 5,000,000 Monthly Active Australian Users (Facebook/ Instagram data)
Tumblr – 4,350,000
LinkedIn – 3,800,000
Twitter – 2,800,000 Active Australian Users approx
Blogspot – 2,550,000
WhatsApp – 2,400,000 Active Australian Users
TripAdvisor – 2,150,000
Snapchat – 2,000,000 approx Monthly Active Australian Users
Tinder – 1,700,000 Australian users
Yelp – 1,500,000
Flickr – 620,000
Pinterest – 310,000
Reddit – 130,000
MySpace – 85,000
Google Plus – 60,000 monthly active Australian users approx.
StumbleUpon – 40,000
Foursquare/Swarm – 19,000
Digg – 15,000
Delicious – 13,500
Periscope – 10,000
(All figures represent the number of Unique Australian Visitors [UAVs] to that website over the monthly period – unless otherwise stated above. See SocialMediaNews.com.au for estimates and calculations).
What we see in these stats
A few things jump from the page in these stats:
Facebook rules but at the same time has become increasingly closed to 3rd parties wishing to gain insights about people and connect. Without doubt our #1 question from customers this year has been asking how to gain better insights from Facebook in our social media monitoring tools. Although brand pages can still be monitored and used as a route to engagement access to topics in non-brand pages is now only through Facebook Topic Data (FTD) and all identification of individuals removed. We’ve yet to see how this works out in Australia as FTD has not been rolled out here and the rules around retaining anonymity may make the volume of insights available quite limited.
Youtube is massive, yet the analytics and interrogation by 3rd party social media monitoring tools is very limited – another example, like Facebook, where the platform is a kingdom within itself.
Instagram has very limited external search and analytics available, and Tumblr none! It’s staggering how the dominant Top 10 sites in Australia have so little analytics available outside their platform. This makes it very difficult to get a holistic and data-integrated view of how social media investments are performing, and how to effectively use these platforms in a balanced mix.
That Linkedin in Australia is 30% larger than Twitter is also a surprise. It shows how successful Linkedin has been here with professionals, yet globally Twitter has nearly 4 times the registered users of Linkedin. Twitter has a lot more potential on this basis, but it’s growth here is flat. Snapchat is approaching the Twitter numbers, and Periscope must be a lag as it is surely much more popular taken on face value.
Finally, the small numbers for Pinterest are a surprise as also is the trickle of people using Foursquare / Swarm.
Conclusion
An interesting update showing the dominance of Facebook, the potential of Twitter, and more importantly demonstrates resoundingly that the top platforms are either already opaque to most social media monitoring and analysis tools, or deliberately becoming more opaque in order to force users into their own systems.