Social Media News’ January compilation of social network visitation in Australia reveals drops in account numbers for Facebook and Google Plus and increased use of LinkedIn and Twitter.

Over the past month, a number of social networks saw increased activity on the previous month as the interruption to traffic caused by the Christmas break returned to normal.

However, as editor of the news site, David Cowling, points out, the impact of the December holiday period plays out differently across the different social networks.

Business-related networks, such as LinkedIn and WordPress, saw declines in December but noticeable rises in January as holiday makers got back to work and their usual blogging cycles.

On the other hand, some sites used primarily for socialising with friends or for personal interests saw a drop following the holiday season. Facebook declined by 24,000 users, down to 11.8 million active accounts, although the social media giant is believed to have culled spam accounts during December and January.

Similarly, Tumblr dropped by 200,000 unique Australian visitors (UAVs), but held onto its position as the fourth most visited social network with 2.9 million UAVs.

Google Plus was down by 30,000 users to 340,000, according to Cowling’s research.

Youtube remains consistent at 11 million visitors, as it did for most of last year, and Twitter users appear to be up slightly.

Sites ranked by active monthly members where possible (by UAVs where not)

1. Facebook – 11,784,460 Australian accounts (down approx 24,000)
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (steady)
3. Blogspot – 3,400,000 UAVs (down 100,000)
4. Tumblr – 2,900,000 UAVs (down 200,000)
5. WordPress.com – 2,700,000 UAVs (up 200,000)
6. LinkedIn – 2,400,000 UAVs (up 300,000)
7. Twitter – 2,200,000 approx Australian accounts* (up 60,000)
8. Instagram – 990,000 approx Australian accounts*
9. Flickr – 830,000 UAVs (up 10,000)
10. Pinterest – 660,000 UAVs (up 10,000)
11. Google Plus – approx 340,000 (down approx 30,000)
12. MySpace – 320,000 UAVs (down 20,000)
13. Yelp – 220,000 UAVs (steady)
14. Reddit – 165,000 UAVs (up 15,000)
15. StumbleUpon – 100,000 UAVs (steady)
16. Foursquare – 56,000 UAVs (up 1,000)
17. Digg – 41,000 UAVs (down 4,000)
18. Delicious – 33,000 UAVs (up 3,000)

* Social Media News estimates Twitter and Instagram user numbers by taking the percentage of Facebook’s global user base that is Australian (1.1%), and assuming the same proportion of each network’s global user base is Australian. In January, Twitter had 200 million global users and Instagram had 90 million.

Source: Quantcast, Comscore, Google Ad Planner tool, Facebook Self-Serve advertising tool, Vivid Social Research Division.

Compiled by SocialMediaNews.com.au (CC BY-ND 3.0).