Just when you thought that the
world was getting a social media fatigue, Pinterest comes around and shows the
world that it’s all wrong! In February 2012 Pinterest was announced as the
fastest site to reach 10 million unique visits. In fact Pinterest is only
behind Facebook and Tumblr in terms of the average time spent by people on the
site. An average Pinterest user spends around 98 minutes a month compared to 2.5
hours on Tumblr and 7 hours on Facebook. What is the reason behind its
phenomenal success?
Like many other social media
companies, Pinterest too is located in the sunny Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley.
The company founded by Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp describes itself as –
Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.
Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find
on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes,
and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards
created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things
and get inspiration from people who share your interests.
It all started with an
application called Tote that Ben was
working on. The idea behind Tote was to create the first women’s fashion
catalogue on Iphone. While working on the app Ben saw that women were grabbing
particular items and tagging them so that they could see it a later time. He
also saw that a large number of users were grabbing, tagging and sharing these
items with their friends. He realized that people were sharing their tastes
with their friends. This led Silbermann to create a tool for Tote users to
organize and share their interests. This tool was instrumental in the
incarnation of Pinterest.
People who have been observing Pinterest say
that what separates it from other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or
Instagram and Flickr is that Pinterest is more about interests that people want
to share rather than what people want to brag about. Unlike facebook images
which scream out ‘I was here’, ‘look at me in this designer dress’ etc.
Pinterest images are more likely to be about what people want to do, like
someone wants to buy a pair of shoes, so they pin its picture on their boards. In
fact if you see the most shared topics on Pinterest you can see the way it
differs from other social sites. Some of the most trending topics happen to be
‘Wedding ideas’ and ‘Food recipes’.
The way Pinterest has grown in
just two years has caught everyone’s attention. People are debating whether
it’s something to last or just another one of that newbie social media site
that would eventually fade away. The way its adding new users, while still
being an invitation only site is something incredible.
The big question, and challenge,
however is how it will move into commercializing itself. Even now it’s earning
handsomely through its affiliate links. But marketers all over are now asking
themselves how they can use Pinterest as a marketing tool. For companies to dole out those dollars there
needs to be data that proves the effectiveness of its platform. A recent study
at Emily Carr University has shown that about 1 in every 5 people who pin
something will later go and buy that thing. This is a great conversion rate. Now
it’s up to the marketers have to devise ways to reap the huge potential that
this website offers. If Pinterest is able to successfully commercialize itself
without alienating its users then its next phase of growth might be even more
astonishing.
