All the buzz about Pinterests these couple days. Their fan page grows every second and the site topples Alexa! Everyone now is trying to leverage this source of traffic and even giving out advice on how to leverage it properly. This site is just a virtual pinboard, where you essentially pin your interests and likes.
I honestly do not see an advantage to this site for online marketers besides for users with eCommerce sites. It is almost essentially like a Facebook "Like" button but instead of a wall its on a virtual pinboard.
Also the age group is very targeted to a certain age and specific gender - female, young adults. This tells me that most pins are essentially products these girls want. They all range from celebrities they like to items they want to things cute. It is all female dominated.
Here is a screenshot of the demographics taken from Quantcast, click to enlarge.
... but I can't knock on Pinterests because it actually solves a problem and I stated it above. Ever go to your Facebook wall and it is just filled with memes of the guy from the Dos Equis beer commercial? or your friends posting pictures of the sunset or their favorite drink? Sometimes your wall just because cluttered with images rather than information.
Pinterests, I assume, is taking the social aspect of Facebook but only relating it to images. Essentially pinning an image is just like sharing a funny picture or a pair of Jordan your just bought. Pinterests takes the interests of users likes and pins it to a web wall for everyone to see, just like how Facebook walls would act. Essentially it solves a social clutter problem.
I know personally I sometimes get annoyed of too many images on my Facebook wall. Interestingly enough I still found no purpose for Pinterests because I do not take pictures of cute fluttering bees and post it to my Facebook wall to say how awesome they were. Nor do I spend countless hours on looking at glitter shoes. I even know some friends from high school create albums of clothes they want or albums of food they have eaten.
They simply took that aspect out of Facebook and made it their own. One segment removed from Facebook and turned into a general wall. Smart thinking. I am assuming that is what they thought, because that is what i first thought of when I looked at Pinterests... "Oh its just a place to share images and Memes!"
Pictures of foods, scenic scenes, vacation spots, family pictures, etc are all going to be part of this community. I can not see it benefiting marketers with software services, branding, even the social aspect I can't see it benefiting performance marketers, but I may be wrong. It is still a brand new site and it has a concept which does make sense. The only problem is look who is taking advantage of this site... females and young adults. It doesn't seem to catch interests with others as you can see from the stats above.
Who I think Pinterests is for...
If you have an eCommerce website or even if you are a local brick and mortar business, you should try to utilize this site. There is a lot of traffic on here but the demo is so spot on that you will need to figure out how to properly aim your product to their demographic. This will increase your interaction with users and even gain you exposure. I feel the image needs to have a 'cute' factor to it.
Final Thoughts...
With so many new social sites popping up and social ideas being executed, I do not see any purpose for this site but a waste of time. Most of these sites are a waste of time. I haven't even fully utilize Google+ because I think it still needs growing. With Pinterests, it isn't going to be part of my social methods nor do see myself using it any time in the future.
