How many people are using social media in New Zealand?

Lots, according to these figures compiled from Comscore and DraftFCB ‘s Orion tool (thanks to Stephen Johnson for the data).

Click on the image for a larger version

And social media is growing in New Zealand. 200,000 newly active social networking accounts were recorded between October 2008 (1.7 million) and February 2009 (1.9 million), according to MSN’s PR agency, Talkies Group.

This graph also shows the steady decline in popularity of Bebo, while Facebook continues to take off (556,000 visitors in October 2008, compared with 805,000 in February 2009).

Meanwhile, Twitter continues to grow from a very small (but highly engaged) user base in New Zealand.

Source: Comscore MyMetrix Feb 2009

Note: these Twitter statistics only measure visits to Twitter.com, not numbers of people using the Twitter service on their mobile phones or the multitude of Twitter desktop apps.

According to Ben Young , who’s been tracking Twitter numbers over the month of April, there are approximately 10,000 active users, which represents 100% growth over the previous month (5,000 active users). Overall user numbers are much higher, says Ben, but the 10,000 figure represents active, involved Twitterers in New Zealand.

I think it’s fair to say, social media is becoming mainstream. What’s even more important is what that means. This is not just a shift in media habits from traditional media to online. These numbers represent profound changes in behaviour. More on this soon!

Update: Nielsen Online has some just-released stats on how New Zealanders use social media.

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