In looking at the data, it is important to remember that just under 90% of Australian adults are online. The, approximately, 10% who are not online are not going to be using social media, so the first two columns could all be multiplied by 0.9 to get an approximate estimate for the Australian adult population.
The strength of Facebook jumps off the page; 80% of the online population claim to have used it in the last year (suggesting that just over two-thirds of the total adult population of Australia use Facebook). This strength is retained when looking at the last week with 74% of the sample saying they had used Facebook in the last week. This 74% is a whopping 93% of all Facebook users, i.e. nearly all Facebook users are using it every week.
In terms of YouTube, about three-quarters of the sample say they have used it in the last year, and three-quarters of these say they have used it in the last week.
Only 25% of the sample claim to have used Twitter in the last year, and this drops to 18% saying they have used it in the last week. With a fast moving service like Twitter, usage in the last week is almost the lowest credible level of usage (tweets are hard to access once they are more than a week old). So, Twitter is probably being used in a meaningful sense by about one-in-six adults. One-in-six is impressive, but it leaves five-in-six not being covered by Twitter – a number to keep in mind when using social media research via Twitter.
LinkedIn has nearly as many people saying they have used it in the last year as Twitter, but only just over half of these say they have used it in the last week. This is a great example of Ehrenberg’s double jeopardy, the smaller brand is also being used less. It would be interesting to explore whether usage levels are related to satisfaction with current job or the state of the economy?
Pinterest is often referred to as the ”new next big thing” or as something that is smaller than Facebook, but whose users are more passionate. However, the data suggest that only about one-in-ten of internet users have used it and, of those, fewer than 50% have used it in the last week. The phenomenon of a small brand with a smaller usage level is a good example of Ehrenberg’s double jeopardy at work.