It seems that Australia’s have fallen in love with social networking sites, in particular Facebook. In February this year Hitwise released a report on “What are Australian’s doing Online” and after using the internet for search (10.8%), social networking and forums (8%) are our second most popular past time even more so than News & Media (6.75%).
So what social networking sites do we like? Well Facebook, MySpace and Bebo of course!
What is really interesting here is that Facebook alone has had a 11-fold increase in traffic in the 12 months to May 2008. Facebook is now ranked as the 4th most visited website in May 2008, up from 6th in April. Not only is traffic increasing so in our engagement with social networks, where on average we spent over 28 minutes on the sites, compared to only 11 minutes across all websites.
Based on the above results yesterday’s post where we found that in a US survey 40% of Generation Y’s expect to have social networking sites in the workplace is not surprising we are seeing these sort results in Australia. So why are these tools becoming so engaging?
“The increased user-engagement on Facebook is due to the proliferation of third-party applications; particularly ones that serve a useful function, such as travel planners or book-sharing programs. Additional features for connecting users, such as ‘People You May Know’ has also helped increase user traction on Facebook” said Sandra Hanchard, analyst at Hitwise.
I would suspect that Australian web users are becoming attracted to user generated content, others opinions, folksononmies and collaborative working. This is unfortunate for most organisations as they have neither the management or technical infrastructure to support these new working methods.
Michael Specht 
A dedicated website for Australian social networking is also http://www.youzoomr.com
Check it out
A social networking website for Australian businesses and professionals is also
http://www.linkedjobs.com.au
Ideal for job seekers and job offers, check it out
It’s interesting that the largest australian based social network for aussies – http://www.smsfun.com.au didn’t even make the top 10.
Seems we’re all controlled by the big international networks.
@Vern
I’m agree with your opinion. I’m also running 2 global fetish sites which is on the top 10 both of them. The question is: How come and even a free business social networking site in 20 days got only 15 members when an adult social network it’s getting about 20 new members in daily bases ?
The question is focused on Aussies as when I was trying to found a business social network I was must to pay a fee to join or simply was not exist. It is not the international networks, it is the culture of people I think.
MyOzpage is a new Australian owned and operated Social Networking Website.
It is 100% FREE to join and use all the features. Connect with your friends and family or make new friends from anywhere is Australia.
About My Age is the online community for over 50s
http://www.aboutmyage.com
This website is free and a fun way to interact with like minded people.
Those other websites listed are mainly for younger people.
I recently found this site photodiary.com
It is hugely popular in Sweden, and could take off here considering it is based soley on images.
http://www.thephotodiary.com/
I run a social networking site called AussieSchoolmates and we’ve seen consistant growth over the last few years to the tune of about 100 new subscribers a day… The key we’ve found is to ensure you have a niche market that you are focusing on. The big guys have gone after the general population and amassed huge amounts of users based on that focus. We found that by providing a social network with a focused service offering we can still gather the subscribers (not at the same level as the big guys) but never the less we have managed to obtain a large following of members which is not bad for a little Aussie website. We’ve got along way to go but our foundations are strong and the future looks pretty rosie… Our mantra is based on a David and Goliath type philosophy… anyone got a huge facebook shaped rock we can borrow?
I tried checking out http://www.youzoomr.com
–However- it kept asking for my user name and password- yet nowhere to register?
What people might not now is that family social networking is huge in Australia. Family network myheritage.com – a site where people can build their family tree and share news, events and pictures and other material, has over 400.000 members in Australia!
but i thinks http://www.orkut.com is better
very interesting post on Social networking sites in Australia, Thanks for sharing.
Nice information for Australia social networking sites. Thanks to share this knowledge with US
A Social Network site that are not really interested in enforcing its own Terms of Service against groups and comments that encourages violence, hatred and racism against others, was ranked as the 4th most visited website in May 2008?
Facebook is king of the hill right now but google+ is going strong i wonder who will win the social networking war …. Cheers from muhammed sekertekin