Most New Zealanders socialize online

The majority of New Zealanders aged 14+ years are now using some form of social media. Having monitored Facebook for over five years, Roy Morgan Research also reports that over half of New Zealanders (56%) use Facebook in an average four weeks. These finding are from ‘The Digital Universe’ report, recently released by Roy Morgan Research.

Currently visited by 2 million New Zealanders in an average four weeks, Facebook began as a messaging and photo sharing website. It has since evolved into a full, multi-media environment for gaming , communication and information seeking and sharing, which dominates the social media sphere.

However social media is much more than just Facebook; there are a number of other fast- growing forms of social media that are rapidly catching up.

For example, Google+ currently has 260,000 visitors (7% of New Zealanders 14+) in an average four week period, which represents an increase of 20% over the last six months. Only 6% of New Zealanders 14+ visit Twitter in an average four weeks, indicating that Twitter is still an ‘early adopter’ phenomenon. Twitter’s growth, however, continues and has increased 31% in the last 12 months.

Pip Elliott, General Manager, Roy Morgan Research NZ, says: “Social media is now mainstream, with the majority of New Zealanders now usin g some form of social media.

“New Zealanders are also usin g a variety of devices (other than just PCs) to access social media. In fact, in an average four weeks 27% of Smartphone owners use their phone for social networking .

“Given this, it is important for New Zealand businesses to understand — at the very minimum — which social networks their customers are using and what they are doing on them. Roy Morgan’s New Technology Adoption Segmentation can help marketers more accurately target New Zealanders with the highest propensity to purchase products in their category.”