Latest stats on Australians’ social media use, Messenger joins the one billion club and Snapchat launches Suggest.

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Stats: how Australians are using social

Facebook remains Australia’s most popular social platforms, used by 95% of respondents in ‘The Sensis Social Media Report 2016’. The report surveyed 100 Australian businesses and 800 consumers.

Instagram is second at 31%, a figure that’s doubled since 2013.

Instagram use is followed by LinkedIn (24%) and Twitter (19%).

The average Australian Facebooker checks in 32 times per week, for an average of 24 minutes per visit. That’s 12.5 hours a week, four hours more than in 2015.

Australians own, on average, three connected devices. 76% of Australians own a smartphone, making it the most popular connected device, followed by laptops (70%), desktops (54%) and tablets (53%).

When it comes to their response to advertising on social, 27% have no problem receiving posts from businesses they follow, 43% occasionally click ads, and 41% research a brand’s reputation on social media before making a purchase.

The ‘Australian Facebook Performance Report 2016’ offers further understanding, principally surrounding the top performing pages and most engaged audiences.

Publishers, magazines and radio pages have the most engaged audiences on Facebook, with 12 out of the top 30 Facebook pages by engagement being radio brands, nine are news and magazine brands and three are TV shows.

The pages with most engagement are Today, That’s Life! and New Idea magazine.

 

FB Messenger joins the one billion club

Messenger has joined Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp with one billion users.

In 2014 Messenger had 200 million users, and the rapid growth can be explained at least in part by the fact that Facebook basically forced its users across to the messaging platform.

17 billion images are shared each month on Messenger, and 22 million animated gifs per day.

Brands are increasingly flocking to the platform, too, with over one billion messages per month shared between users and companies.

About 20,000 bots now roam the platform, up from 11,000 last month.

 

Snapchat launches Suggest

Snapchat has rolled out Suggest, a function which enables users to find accounts. Via the stories platform, one can tap a user’s name and send it to accounts of other users, who are alerted via private Chat message about the Suggestion, along with info about the suggested user’s name, handle, and profile GIF.

They can then be approved/followed via the like button.

The new feature is potentially useful for brands who may ask followers to suggest them to friends.

Other news for Snapchat comes from the Global Web Index and reveals that over half of 16-24 year-olds in the USA, Canada and UK are now active users of the platform.

 

 

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