Auckland: 5 December 2012 – Latest figures from Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and insights, show more than 2.8 million New Zealanders (aged 2+) visited social media sites in the month of October.
New Zealanders enjoy interacting with peers, other consumers and brands on social media sites where they spent an average of nearly eight hours each on social media during the month, the equivalent of a full working day.
Facebook is the top ranking social media website in New Zealand with a unique audience of over 2.7 million people who visited the site. With 80 percent of the online New Zealand population visiting the Facebook site, New Zealand has the highest proportion of the online population who visit the social networking site in comparison to Australia (74%), the US (69%) and the UK (68%).
Blogger is the next highest ranked site with a monthly unique audience of 803,000, while Twitter, Tumblr and WordPress had a unique audience of 431,000, 428,000 and 394,000 respectively. The remaining top 10 social media sites are Google+ (365,000), LinkedIn (309,000), Wikia (218,000), Squidoo (192,000) and Pinterest (187,000). (see chart)
The use of social media platforms is not mutually exclusive and of the 2.7 million Facebook users, 29 percent also used Blogger, 15 percent used Twitter as well as Tumblr, Google+ (13%) and LinkedIn (11%).
Most New Zealanders are accessing social media sites via their computer (96%) and over a quarter are using their smartphone (27%). Tablets are used to access the sites by seven percent of social media users.
Using social media to keep in contact with family and friends are the top reasons for participation. In addition, 47 percent of the online population engage social media at least once per month to learn more about brands, products and services and 42 percent to hear about others’ positive or negative consumer experiences.
Tony Boyte, Associate Director of Research, Nielsen NZ said: ‘Consumer decisions and behaviours are increasingly driven by opinions, tastes and preferences published on social media sites. The good news is that brands can now listen to conversations taking place thereby putting them in a much better position to understand and meet customer requirements in the future.’
About Nielsen Online Ratings
Nielsen Online Ratings tracks online usage and deliver monthly reporting on people-centric audience metrics, demographic information and detailed site analytics. A hybrid methodology is used which combines the benefits of a representative metered panel (covering demographics and reach) with tagging data (providing accurate measurement of activity). The panel has approximately 3,000 individuals recruited online and is weighted to match the New Zealand internet population.
About Nielsen
Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.
