Many readers are likely to be approaching this post with a degree of skepticism, and whilst reminding you of the need for a catchy title, I’m still willing to accept a certain level of doubt. After all, Australia is not even amongst the top 10 countries when it comes to Twitter reach across the population. Less than 10% of Australian’s visit the microblog as of August 2011, which clearly doesn’t stack up to the dizzying obsession of places like the Netherlands, where one out of four people tweet.
However, one loss is another’s gain for Kevin Rudd MP, who is now the biggest fish in a relatively small pond. His list of one million followers represents half of Australian Twitter users - or 1% of the entire Twittersphere. Even so, such numbers associated to local tweeters (sorry if that’s getting twedious) are not even close to the towering stats we associate with Facebook, which has 10.5 million profiles in Australia - almost half the population.
For those of you who aren’t across these ever-changing social media stats, the skepticism may simply stem from the view of Twitter as mainly a trivial broadcast of an individual’s menial existence, where the only redeeming aspect is the person’s offline profile (be it physical or otherwise). Kim Kardashian has, after all, gathered almost 10 million followers (slightly less than Barack Obama, but a lot more than Mr Rudd!) with timeless tweets like: “I think it's new background time!!! I want to find a new one!”
So while I accept these views aren’t without foundation, Twitter reach in Australia has nevertheless almost doubled since January 2011. Its use as a public platform for User Generated Media (UGM) is already higher than any other in the country. And although Facebook is accessed by many more Australians on a much more frequent basis, this is mostly for private social interactions. The public Groups on Facebook do receive a lot of ‘likes’ and ‘fans’, but the time spent and the content uploaded on these pages compared to that within a person’s private network, is extremely low.
So, when it comes to expressing their public opinion and sharing the news and issues that matter most, many Australians really are obsessed with Twitter.
While this position may now come as no surprise, Twitter’s dominance as a single channel for online public opinion is actually exaggerated in Australian social media relative to its Asia Pacific neighbours (excluding perhaps New Zealand). In countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the conversations are typically much more evenly spread across a multitude of influential forums and blogs. In others like South Korea, Twitter is overshadowed by local microblogs such as me2DAY while, similarly, in China Twitter doesn’t even exist and the China-only Weibo rules (to give further context, Weibo acquired its 100 millionth user in February ie. Six months earlier than Twitter!).
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/bmasia/bm-asiapacific-social-media-infographics-bookletaug2011
I believe there are three key factors contributing towards Twitter’s position in Australia, which I will explore in soon in an update to this blog. I’m sure you’ll agree that they deserve their own post!
1. The youth of Australian social media
2. Freedom of press
3. The rise of mobile
Until then, happy tweeting!
Callum Feasby, Brandtology
Social Media Consultant - Product Specialist
Brandtology
Callum is Product Specialist and Consultant for Brandtology, working with clients across Australia and New Zealand. Having been with Brandtology since the company’s foundation, Callum's work in social media intelligence has spanned UK, Asia and Australia, bringing considerable international experience to the social media discussion.