Pinterest is a social pinboard website where users can upload, save and manage images. Pinterest uses extensive tagging to organize the vast amount of uploaded content. The Pinterest interface allows Pinterest users to create different boards which allow them to collect certain images into dedicated folders called “boards”. Pinterest now has over 100 million monthly unique visitors as of March 2013, with most traffic originating from the United States, followed by Britain & Canada.
Pinterest is currently one of the top 20 websites in America. Pinterest use continues to grow rapidly; 67% of Pinterest’s total users are female.
The majority (78%) of Pinterest’s members live in an urban area with 87% living in cities with populations greater than 200000 people.
Pinterest is an excellent way for individuals to share specific things they are interested in. Pinterest can be used by businesses as a marketing tool, with Pinterest being the latest social media fad that has taken off this year. Pinterest allows users to post images of products they like or are inspired by, helping them show their styles to the world. Pinterest is mostly used as a bookmarking site for people who want to save inspiration pieces from the web, however, Pinterest is now being used increasingly by companies wanting Pinterest users to help them market their brand or product.
The majority of Pinterest traffic comes from females aged between 18-44 years old. The majority of Pinterest users (70%) access Pinterest via mobile phone and one-third of all daily visitors use Pinterest on iOS devices. Pinterest’s growth has been driven by a combination of factors including Pinterest’s business model, Pinterest’s increasing number of themed pinboards, and Pinterest’s ‘visual search’ technology.
In the past year, Pinterest has increased its user base from 3 million to 10 million, which is one hundred times more than it had in 2011. In April 2012 Pinterest had 4 times as many unique visitors as Tumblr and today Pinterest has just under half of Tumblr’s monthly unique visitors (101 million).
Pinterest is currently valued at $3.8 billion out of $11 billion that Google offered them back in September 2012 for their buyout. Pinterest hasn’t taken any offers since then but if they do this could be very beneficial for Pinterest as Pinterest is using Google Adsense, a service that Google owns.
Pinterest is an excellent tool for businesses to use if they want Pinterest users to help them promote their products. Pinterest allows businesses to show Pinterest visitors what products are trending on Pinterest and why it will be beneficial for Pinterest users to buy the product.
Pinterest has just launched promoted pins which means businesses can now pay for their pinboards/pins themselves to be shown more often than others. If you’re looking into buying Pinterest-promoted pins then it’s important not only to set up your board but also take it down after so you don’t look spammy by only uploading images of boards with one image uploaded onto all of them.
It’s difficult to determine exactly how Pinterest works as Pinterest isn’t a very straightforward website. Pinterest doesn’t have a traditional search bar but Pinterest users can type their searches into the Pinterest search bar and Pinterest will find anything that relates to what they are searching for.
Pinterest uses tags which is why it’s so easy for Pinterest to use extensive tagging when organizing uploaded content, if you upload an image onto Pinterest you can tag other Pinterest users by typing “@” followed by the username of the pinner you want to tag then “:” then enter your text or choose from suggested hashtags/terms that could relate to this user. For example, if I wanted to tag @laurengray on one of her boards I would write “@laurengray: #fashion #style”.
Pinterest also categorizes Pinterest content by using “boards” which Pinterest users can create to organize their Pinterest pins into. Pinterest has over 3 million boards so it’s really up to Pinterest users how they want to organize their boards and Pinterest doesn’t interfere with this. Pinterest makes it easier for Pinterest users to see what other people are pinning so Pinterest created the “popular board” which is a collection of pins from different Pinterest boards that have recently received lots of activity.
The popular board isn’t pinned onto Pinterest itself, instead, the popular board appears on every one of your searches if that search contained any influential pins. For example, if I searched for silver rings then Pinterest will display some pins at the top of my search results that were pinned by influential pinner’s Pinterest boards. Pinterest also displays recent pins at the top of Pinterest search results which Pinterest does this by finding all the latest pins that are related to your Pinterest search term.
Pinterest users can create an account by clicking on joining Pinterest in the Pinterest footer however if Pinterest finds it suspicious that you’re visiting Pinterest from a device they haven’t seen before then they will ask you to enter your phone number so they can send you a verification text message, this is because Pinterest is popular with younger people so likely if you have never heard of Pinterest before it could be because you aren’t young enough to use Pinterest or don’t have teenagers/young adults who love using Pinterest.
If you do decide to create an account for yourself via your mobile device Pinterest will provide you with an app for your phone. Pinterest doesn’t have a mobile version of Pinterest but Pinterest has separate mobile apps created by Pinterest, the Pinterest mobile app allows you to pin images from anywhere even if you’re not on Pinterest just simply save your favorite Pinterest images into your “board” then when you are ready to go onto Pinterest then open up the Pinterest app and all your saved images will be there waiting for you. If you do create an account via your mobile device it’s important not to leave the cookies active in the background so Pinterest can still track what devices are being used to log onto Pinterest or else Pinterest won’t know whether this is truly an account that belongs to you or someone who tries to hack into your account.
Pinterest works as Pinterest has a very large community of users who Pinterest has found are more likely to use Pinterest rather than just browse Pinterest. Pinterest offers Pinterest users many features that makes Pinterest a popular website, Pinterest can be used for inspiration and planning outfits/collections, Pinterest is also a great place to save a photo or image that you like into your “board” then access these contents later on via the Pinterest app before going onto Pinterest again. It’s important not to make your boards public otherwise everyone else will see your pins and any images you maintain private won’t be visible via other pinners even if they search for them.
If you want others to be able to follow what you pin then make sure anyone can follow you but don’t worry as Pinterest won’t notify Pinterest users when you pin something new. Pinterest uses the P4 algorithm (Powers-4) instead of Google’s SEO ranking or Yahoo’s BOSS, Pinterest has a different way to rank Pinterest pins and Pinterest likes to keep this method a secret however it is thought Pinterest ranks pins by how many times a Pinterest user re-pins an image and Pinterest probably uses these things: *Which Pinterest boards and/or users your Pinterest board follows, which has the most influence over your pin, what other pinner’s think about your pin.
