AIMIA Unveils Australian Web History Project
3 August 2009 | Sydney
- Usage grows faster than penetration
- Bebo rules Australian social media engagement
- Online retail taking off in Australia
- Note to media and bloggers – a video animation of the interactive content is available for download.
Sydney, Australia – 3 August 2009 – The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) today unveiled its new History of the Australian Web Project, which has established a permanent and public record of the major trends of the Australian Internet since 2001.
The project combines an extraordinary interactive visual display developed by The Interaction Consortium using data supplied by Nielsen Online, for users to track how the most popular online properties and services have evolved and continue to evolve in the early part of the 21st century.
“This project has revealed some fascinating insights into Australian web usage and creates a much needed snapshot of the Australian Internet landscape and longer-term trends,” said AIMIA CEO, John Butterworth. “Now, Australians have access to an engaging public record of the cultural, business and government impacts of our online economy.”
Paul McCarthy, chair of AIMIA Awards Judging and the creative force behind the Project, notes that many of Australia’s media industries including book, music and film publishing, have long maintained public records charting music sales, television ratings, bestseller lists and box office records, and that these have created important and enduring chronicles of the evolution of these industries.
“The goal of the History of the Australian Web Project is to provide a similar chronicle of Australia’s Internet and for it to become a captivating resource for students, industry commentators and others locally and around the world.”
Some key findings of the Project include:
- Australian Internet usage grew faster than penetration: Australia’s active Internet audience grew 60% (from 7.2m people to 11.7m) but in the same period our use of the internet more than doubled. In terms of page views per person, usage grew 120% (595 to 1307) and time spent per person grew 126% (9.25 hours per month to 21 hours per month).
- Australians become social – Social networking sites like Facebook.com and the youth-oriented social networking website Bebo.com have had a dramatic increase in both number of users and use over the past three years. Bebo has shown the fastest growth in terms of amount of time spent on the site. Since its appearance on the Australian Charts in 2005, Bebo.com has grown to attract more than 1.1 million Australians on a monthly basis and the site holds their attention for two hours on average each month.
- Australians love to search: In the last five years, use of search engine portals, notably Google and Microsoft’s Live.com (now Bing.com) has grown dramatically.
- Online retail is taking off – in 2008, online retail emerged as one of the highest growth sectors in Australia’s Internet. Australians' use of online retail aggregators, comparison shopping and auction sites were among those with the highest growth in terms of time spent on website properties in 2008.
AIMIA has noted a list of the Top 20 Sites Ranked by Annual Growth (in terms of time spent on site) from 2005-2008 as follows:
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