Facebook continued to show significant growth, while Twitter came onto the social networking scene with a bang in 2009, quickly amassing a significant following.
The study also found that social networking users are ubiquitous across the Web, comprising nearly 90 per cent of the audience base of the top Internet properties in Australia in June.
"Social networking continues to grow in popularity both across Australia and throughout the world," said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region.
"Social networking is now an essential part of peoples' daily online routine, providing a level of engagement and reach that far exceeds most other content categories. Understanding how to leverage this audience successfully is both a challenge and significant opportunity for most digital marketers today."
Nearly 9 million Australians visited a social networking site in June, making it one of the most popular content categories on the Web. Facebook led as the most visited social networking destination with more than 6 million visitors and growing 95 per cent from the previous year. MySpace Sites ranked second with 3.5 million visitors, up 5 per cent, followed by Windows Live Profile with nearly 2 million visitors. Twitter witnessed the most substantial growth, surging to 800,000 visitors in June, up from just 13,000 visitors a year ago. Orkut also achieved significant growth reaching 252,000 visitors, up 607 per cent.
According to comScore Segment Metrix, a marketing segmentation tool, visitors to the top properties in Australia displayed a strong skew towards also visiting social networking sites.
Though less than 72 per cent of the total Internet audience in Australia visited social networking sites in June, approximately 90 per cent of visitors to the top 20 most popular properties were among this group. Similarly, while 14 per cent of the total Internet audience can be classified as "heavy social networkers" (i.e. the top 20 per cent of visitors to the social networking category by time spent), approximately 25 per cent of visitors to the top 20 properties were among this group.
Google Sites ranked as the most visited property in Australia in June with 10.7 million visitors, 78 per cent of whom were visitors to social networking sites and 16 per cent of whom were heavy social networkers. Microsoft Sites ranked as the second largest property with 9.5 million visitors, followed by Facebook.com at #3 with 6.1 million visitors.
Social networking users made up 83 per cent of Telstra Corporation visitors, while other local sites also saw their audience base favor social networking, including Fairfax Media (88 per cent social networkers) and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (85 per cent social networkers). Glam Media and WordPress had the highest composition of heavy social networkers at 35.4 per cent each, followed by New York Times Digital (33.4 per cent), Viacom Digital (32.0 per cent), Amazon Sites (31.3 per cent) and AOL LLC (31.1 per cent).
"Knowing that the vast majority of a site's visitors are social networking users should be a wakeup call to any marketer trying to understand its audience," continued Hodgman.
"Engaging your audience is not only about how you interact with them when they are on your site, but also about how you reach out and interact with them through other online channels, including social networks. As social networking sites increasingly become one of the Internet's most popular destinations, it is especially critical for media companies to engage their audience where they are spending the majority of their time online."
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