Australians are lagging behind other parts of the world in their uptake of social networking sites like Facebook which have now become more popular than email, a global study by Nielsen Online has revealed.
The Global Faces and Networked Places report, compiled through surveys with members of Nielsen's online NetView panels in 10 countries, placed Australia eighth in terms of consumers' uptake of social networking and blogging activity last year. Despite almost two thirds of the Australians surveyed (59.9%) belonging to a "member community" or blog, a rise of 4.9% from the previous year, local participation was about seven percentage points behind the global average. Brazil topped the list with 80% of those surveyed participating in social networks (up 1.4% from 2007), with the UK and US reporting participating levels of 69% and 67% respectively.
Meanwhile Australia was placed ahead of Germany and Switzerland which both reported a 51% participation level. Globally, consumers' use of websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and blogs, has now overtaken personal email as the fourth most popular online category behind search (85.9%), general interest portals and communities (85.2%) and software manufacturers (73.4%). Melanie Ingrey, director of market research at Nielsen Online, said Australian¹s participation in social network sites has exploded since the first half 2007 but that numbers are soft, compared to other markets, as the sites take time to gain familiarity and momentum.
"It's a knock on effect. We saw very few Australians access these sites prior to March and April 2007 but now that unique audience figures have taken off it will invite a higher spread of users," she said. The time spent on social networks also rose significantly last year. The amount of time spent of member community sites increased by 63% to 45 billion minutes in 2008. Meanwhile the time spent on Facebook, which was included as a separate category by Nielsen, grew by 566% from 3.1 billion minutes to 20.5 billion last year. For the first time, Facebook surpassed rival MySpace as the world's most popular social network site.
In 2008 Facebook saw a 168% surge in consumer uptake to 108 million unique users compared to a 3% decline in MySpace membership, sitting at 81 million users. The report claims that while Australians spend an average of almost three hours per month on the site, subscriber growth and engagemnet has not been suppported by a surge in advertising revenue. Ingrey said while Facebook had proved successful for many financial advertisers during 2008, brands are presented with many challenges on sites where users are the core content producers.
"What we're seeing on Facebook is that because most of the content in created by the members, advertisers need to tread carefully so to not be considered an intrusion," she said. The report concluded that social networks present a catch 22 situation for advertisers whereby the amount of personal information available is a goldmine for advertisers wanting to target specific campaigns to consumers and yet are environments where consumers are less tolerant to ads.
A study conducted in December by Nielsen Online in Australia revealed that 38% of online consumers considered ads on social networks to be an intrusion, up from 29% in 2007. However MySpace, which is rich in entertainment content, has attracted more advertisers than Facebook despite its slower growth. Social networks and the advertising industry have yet to find the ³magic formula² for a mutually beneficial relationship, the report concluded. As opposed to using standards ad models, advertisers are said to benefit from participating in relevant conversation with consumers rather than pushing ads onto them. Advertisers must also take a more authentic, ccandid approach to the messages they convey within these networks.
