We don’t talk much about Pinterest around here because it doesn’t have an insane owner, a fluctuating stock price, or a tendency to bring out the absolute worst in hilariously awful self-centered behavior. Also, there’s only so much glurge about troo wuv and/or religious kitsch that we can take at any given time. Seriously, there are pins on that site that would make the program director at the Hallmark Channel nauseous.
Nonetheless, you can never go wrong giving people the opportunity to throw pictures at each other, and the site has a strong appeal to women. Strong enough that Pinterest is officially playing on the big stage when it comes to social networks.
Pinterest, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is basically an image sharing site. Users “pin” images they find to various boards and can “repin” other images they find. I don’t really see the appeal but it’s got a strong one since every woman I know is on it at least an hour a day. And then spends another hour on Pintester, since it’s hilarious.
Quoth CNET:
Pinterest had a total of 25.3 million visitors and ranked 50th on the list. Besides Facebook getting 4th place, other social-media sites also maintained spots on ComScore’s list. LinkedIn got 26th, Twitter got 27th, Instagram.com got 44th, and MySpace got 47th.
Justin Timberlake did a lot for MySpace, huh?
Anyway, breaking into the top fifty and still getting beaten by a site only crappy bands go to may not sound like much, but consider that Pinterest is built entirely on sharing images and nothing else. There are no stupid games, no political arguments to get into, really, just people sharing images. Consider that Tumblr is #42.
Of course, many legal experts believe it’s only a matter of time before the site is sued for copyright infringement. But hey, until then, congratulations!