Adoption of social media in Australia

Posted on 09 October 2009

Inching closer to the launch of fundsforum.  So the time comes to start laying out the rationale for a financial media aggregation site for the Australian funds management industry.

Let’s start by looking at the adoption rate of social media technologies in Australia.  The following chart is becoming a little dated (as it relates to data collected in 2008 by Forrester Research – Technographic Surveys):

Social media in Australia

It summarises the way that different demographics in the US and Australia use social media.  There are six overlapping levels of participation defined:

1) Creators – make social content

2) Critics – post ratings, reviews, comments on blogs & forums

3) Collectors – use RSS feeds, add “tags” to web pages & photos

4) Joiners – maintain a profile on a social networking site

5) Spectators – read blogs, watch videos, read forums

6) Inactives – none of the above

Not surprisingly perhaps the US leads Australia in the adoption of social media technologies.  In the younger demographic the differences are less pronounced – which is also intuitively sensible.  Perhaps the most interesting point is that the 35 to 54 year old demographic is trailing the US by a fair margin.  This is consistent with my experience – where the general population in the finance industry have been either too busy or see little value in social media.  It is a conservative industry at the best of times – where the established practices of doing business are slow to be challenged.
I suspect that we are on the cusp of change.  That a greater proportion of 35 to 54 year olds will move from the ‘inactive’ category  - using the powers of the web to gather information either as ‘spectators’ or ‘collectors’.  We will explore this more in later instalments.
Category: Social media

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