New Zealanders get more social, says Nielsen

Over 2.7 million Kiwis, or more than 80% of the online population, visited Facebook in October, market research company Nielsen said today. That makes Kiwis the biggest users of the site, compared to Australia (74%), the US (69%) and the UK (68%).

We use social media to keep in contact with family and friends predominantly, although nearly half say they also go to social networking sites to find out about brands, products and services.

While Facebook is most visited, with over 2.7 million visits in total from New Zealanders, Blogger also has a huge audience, with more than 800,000 New Zealanders visiting in October and some 29% of online New Zealanders. Google’s social networking site, Google+, managed a less fabulous 13% of online New Zealanders, and more than 350,000 visits.

Twitter, Tumblr and WordPress all averaged around 400,000 visitors. Newcomer Pinterest managed 187,000 visits from Kiwis, while business favourite LinkedIn had more than 300,000 visits.

Kiwis spend nearly eight hours a month on Facebook, says Nielsen,  with most other sites seeing less than an hour of our time each month. Most social networking access is using a PC. We use our PCs, smartphone and tablet for social networking, with around a quarter of us using both a PC and smartphone/tablet.