The Bulletin December 2020 & Happy New Year!

As we come to the final Bulletin of the year (and what a year it’s been) the team at The Township want to wish everyone a very happy and prosperous new year.

December’s bulletin is a recap of all the weird and surprisingly wonderful things that have happened during 2020; because we don’t want to focus on the Zoom and gloom of this year. Online shopping went through an unprecedented (last time we use that word, we promise) yet largely unsurprising boom, this year became the year for TikTok and of course, it wouldn’t be a yearly round-up without a mention of a Google search trend or two.

It’s safe to say that this year was the BIGGEST year for online shopping in Australia. During a year of lockdowns, brick and mortar store closures, the inability to spend money on things like vacations and commuting as well as people just generally preferring to stay inside more, it makes complete sense. But when you take a deep dive into the actual statistics, the amount that online shopping has increased has surpassed all expectations.

According to the AusPost December report, during the four days of Black Friday, there was a 42% YOY increase in online purchases over 2.2 MILLION households shopping online! 40% of these households made two or more purchases online according to Shopify, their merchant’s trade on Black Friday this year grew by a huge 80% compared to last year. 2020 will definitely be one for the record books when it comes to online shopping and now that we’re opening up again it will be interesting to see how long this trend stays in place and whether there will be a retail boom in 2021 now that people can enjoy the physical experience they’ve gone so long without.

We’ve spoken a lot about TikTok this year (we think they might have appeared in almost every bulletin) so it’s safe to say that 2020 is definitely the year for the post-Millenial video-sharing app. In June, we wrote that TikTok had nearly overtaken YouTube as the most-watched platform for kids aged 4-15 years old… by only 5 minutes per day.

In August, users could sell merchandise through the app, giving creators a new way to monetize their time on the app. It was the most downloaded app of the year, it played a huge role in activism and protests, gave musicians an outlet during an era of no gigs and became the perfect way to pass time for the world that was trapped indoors with nothing to do but scroll.

During a year where close contact with others lessened, so TikTok became even more important as a symbol of community. If you have a few minutes, check out the top 100 TikTok creators, trends and videos that inspired Australians (and the world) this year, as put together by TikTok.

It’s always exciting to look at what was trending with Google searches throughout the year. In Australia, unsurprisingly most of the top searches revolved around COVID-19, from “Coronavirus symptoms” to “toilet paper”. The top searched was the “US Election” but there was also plenty of nation-based searches for Australia such as “NSW fires” and “air quality Melbourne”. Unsurprisingly, “weather tomorrow” was a big search hit. We’re nothing if not prepared for the weather.

If you want something in more of an easy to digest format, then take a look below at the visualisation of the Global year in Google searches by Roshaan Khan, with each search term visualised by popularity per month. Unsurprisingly, the terms that were popular pretty much all year were: “Zoom”, “unemployment”, “death”, “mask”, “TikTok”, “Tesla stock” and “vaccine”. Weirdly, the search for “Coronavirus” pretty much peters off after June… It’s almost as if people were tired of hearing about it.