Category: Pinterest

One of the most interesting facts to come out of the much-discussed Pew Research Center study on use of social media which was released last week is the sharp spike in Pinterest’s popularity. In fact it is now so popular that more Americans say they use it than Twitter, and it only just trails behind LinkedIn!

Yet when social media is discussed online and in the ‘mainstream media’, the ‘Big 4’ social media sites are always Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Pinterest is still somehow regarded as fringe.

Why?

The benign explanation is that this is a case of ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’.

Yes, more respondents in this survey – American adults who use social media – say they use Pinterest, and that is how it was widely reported. But the fact remains that there are more than 500 million registered users of Twitter worldwide, and “only” 70 million of Pinterest.

In the world of social media, a few months is a long time, so it may come as something of a surprise if I told you that Pinterest is the next big social media phenomenon, and that it has already celebrated its 2nd birthday.

Help, what’s Pinterest?!

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website. It allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections of photos of any subject. The sites mission statement is to "connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting." 

Development of Pinterest began in December 2009, and the site launched as a closed beta in March 2010. By February of this year, Pinterest had over 10 million users. The majority of Pinterest’s users are women.