Australia’s love affair with social networking has gone mobile, with customers using their mobiles to visit Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in record numbers over the past 12 months, according to new figures released this week by Telstra.

Ross Fielding, Executive Director of Telstra Mobility Products, said an increasing number of Australians were accessing social networking sites on their mobiles to stay connected with friends and family on the move. Telstra examined the social networking habits of more than five million 3G mobile customers over a 12-month period and found:

• The number of customers using Facebook on their mobiles has grown almost four-fold (by 390 per cent) since April 2009.
  
   
• The number of people accessing Twitter on their mobiles each month has grown by 450 per cent compared with this time last year.
  
   
• Visits to MySpace on mobiles have more than doubled, up 230 per cent over the past 12 months.

Facebook is by far the most popular social networking destination for Telstra 3G mobile customers followed by MySpace, YouTube and then Twitter.

To help more Australians get in on the act, Telstra will provide millions of its Next G™ customers access to a new social networking service called ‘Tribe’® which launches this week.

Mr Fielding said: “Tribe is a new mobile social networking service that combines Facebook®, Twitter and MySpace in a single location. It allows customers to manage their social profile from a single, easy-to-use portal that can be accessed from a range of Next G™ mobiles – not just smartphones.

“Tribe lets social networking fans – from fanatics to first-time users – access comments, view pictures, post updates and upload photos via a neat and secure mobile portal. Customers can even update their status to multiple sites simultaneously. Best of all, data used to access the service is unmetered meaning most Tribe features are available at no cost to customers.”