Aussies v. Twitter?
Tweet. Hashtag. Trending. Retweet. Follow. You’d be hard pressed to find a person on the planet who does not understand this 21st century vernacular. Twitter emerged from humble beginnings in 2006 espousing the ingeniously simple idea of limiting a person’s humble opinion on anything, or perhaps simply what they ate for breakfast, to 140 characters and with a darn cute little blue birdy icon to boot.
I came across this info-graphic the other day, representing Twitter use by country. I was quite surprised to see Australia not amongst the top Tweeters of the world. In fact, we are not even in the top ten.
The more I thought about this I became less bemused by the fact that Australia does not appear to have embraced Twitter as wholly as some other nations. From a purely anecdotal perspective, only four people I know use Twitter. In Australia, it appears to me that Twitter is the domain of the celebrity and the business savvy who utilize the free marketing and self promotion function Twitter fulfills.
Australian Twitter use statistics when compared to those of Facebook support my anecdotal view. Facebook has 55% online population penetration whilst Twitter sits at a more modest 10%. However, statistics only provide information on the data that has been collected and to contrast the success of Twitter and Facebook within the Australian social media landscape solely on statistical data runs the risk of getting the picture wrong. Twitter and Facebook are, after all, two radically different forums.
So are Aussies shunning Twitter? Or is it just slower to find its niche within the Aussie social media landscape?
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