Social networking shows explosive growth in Australia

Stan Beer
Thursday, 05 July 2007 18:51

Your IT - Home IT

New research shows that the use of social media such as YouTube in Australia is soaring pushing Australians onto international sites at the expense of local destinations. The findings were released this week at a press briefing held by Future Exploration Network and Nielsen/NetRatings, in the lead-up to the Future of Media Summit 2007 being staged in Sydney on 18 July.

A brief summary of today’s release of research findings:
 
From Nielsen/NetRatings:

How bandwidth affects media usage: Low Internet bandwidth in Australia is playing a major role in the lower time spent online by Australians, and in how their media consumptions habits differ from other countries. Average home user connection speeds in Australia are 21%-43% of the speeds in comparable developed countries.
 
The rise of social networking online. In the year to May 2007, growth in use of YouTube by Australians was a massive 239%, resulting in 20.6% of online Australians accessing the site each month. That still leaves us far behind our peers, with 30.2% of Americans and US and 25.5% of British accessing YouTube. Australians are behind in the use of blogging platforms, but close to the lead in usage of Wikipedia.
 
Australian use of online audio and video: 44% of Australian online users have downloaded free audio, and 36% have downloaded free video, while 14% have paid to download audio. A total of 38% of users who download content transfer it to a portable device, while almost half of these users transfer all their downloaded content to portable devices.
 
Growth in international vs Australian content: In 2006, the growth in international content viewed by Australian Internet users increased 45%, compared to a 21% growth in domestic content. This has been driven by massive traffic from Australians going to US social media sites such as YouTube, at the expense of domestic sites.
 
From Future Exploration Network:

Including pre-release material from the Future of Media Report 2007, due out 12 July.

Emerging media business model frameworks: How the “long tail” creates different business models for new media companies, and the relevance to Australian new media companies.
 
Media localisation and globalisation. Moves by News and Fairfax into local online media follow similar steps by major US media companies. However, new media companies such as Perthnorg.com.au are creating new models for local media. This suggests new global opportunities for Australian media.
 
Personalisation of advertising. Yesterday Yahoo! announced SmartAds, which provides personalised advertisements to viewers. Future Exploration Network has created a framework for how advertising will be personalised to the individual. There are massive implications for advertisers and publishers..
 
Comparison of new media markets in US and Australia. Australia has just 15% as many prominent blogs as peer nations, relative to its population. There is very limited development of Australia-specific social media. Classifieds ownership in Australia has tended to remain with large media players.

To date there is no satisfactory explanation as to why Australian web dwellers are relatively disinterested in accessing local content as opposed to global content. One possibility is that Australians on the web, freed from geographical constraints, are increasingly viewing themselves as part of the global online village and all the possibilities that entails compared to the narrower experiences provided by local neighbourhood content.