Lucas Ng's blog

How many Aussies tweet?

The answer as always, is it depends on who you ask.

Comscore: 800,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009

Nielsen: 1,400,000 Aussies visited Twitter.com in July 2009

What?

Well, different measurement systems = different methodologies = different numbers.

One can conclude though, that there are a LOT of Aussies visiting Twitter.com, certainly over half a million, which is amazing growth over the past few months.

Comscore released their July-09 report on Australian social media statistics and pegged the number of visitors to Twitter.com at 800,000, an impressive 6122% increase from 13,000 a year ago. According to comScore World Metrix, 6.5% of Australia’s Internet Audience visits Twitter.com

Meanwhile, Nielsen Netview reported 1,400,000 Australians visited Twitter.com in July 2009 (up from 60,000 in Jun-08), representing 8.3% of the total Australian Internet Audience.

Source: Nielsen Netview, July 2009

Interestingly, the Netview figures also add fuel to the fire that Teenagers Don’t Tweet:

• 92.5% of Australian Twitter users are over the age of 18 
• Within the age bracket for 12-17 year olds, the unique audience composition index is only 62*
• Yet it is 122 for 18-24 year olds
• And 167 for 25-34 year olds

(A value over 100 represents a higher concentration of unique visitors from that age group as compared to the age group’s concentration across the entire web)

Is it true that teens in Australia use SMS/text to share information rather than social media websites?

*Nielsen Netview reports that their sample size for 12-17 year olds does not meet their minimum standards so the composition index figure may be skewed.

Related reading:

• 2 Million More Australians Go Social (Comscore)
• Who’s Driving Twitter Popularity? Not Teens (New York Times)
• Why Don’t Teens Twitter (Techcrunch)