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Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top

82 points| adidash | 12 years ago |techcrunch.com | reply

38 comments

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[+] shrikant|12 years ago|reply
This sounded... difficult to believe, so I thought I'd read the actual report on the Pew website.[0]

They seem to use "social media website" interchangeably with the actual apps in question, and their methodology writeup doesn't mention the actual questions they asked in their telephone surveys.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if more people used the Pinterest website more than the Twitter website, as the latter seems more oriented to being a website. It would appear that Twitter has way more users overall as compared to Pinterest though.

  Pinterest: "50 million unique monthly users worldwide" [1]
  Twitter: 117 million monthly active tweeting users [2]
So headline should technically be "Pinterest website passed Twitter website in popularity ..."

[0] http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-Media-Update/Main...

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20131023/pinterest-does-another-massiv...

[2] http://blog.peerreach.com/2013/11/4-ways-how-twitter-can-kee...

[+] ceejayoz|12 years ago|reply
I'd suspect a much larger proportion of Twitter users are things like RSS feed bots, though.
[+] AlexanderDhoore|12 years ago|reply
(Not that anyone cares, but:) I'm a 23 year-old without social media or smartphone. I consider myself a science experiment. The world is looking more alien to me every single day.

For example: last night I was watching the Vergecast [1]. The last episode is literally 90 minutes of four adult men bitching about social media smartphone apps! It's insane.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204758/the-vergecast-105...

[+] cases|12 years ago|reply
If you're watching the Vergecast and posting about it on HN then you're not that much of an outsider as you think you are. No one of my friends or family your age are on Twitter or Pinterest and maybe half are on Facebook. It's easy to think the whole world is into social media when you're reading about it every day, but the majority of people have no idea what any of this means or are even remotely interested in it.
[+] flueedo|12 years ago|reply
Don't people bug you about having no way to contact you without a phone? I'm in no social networks currently either, but had to keep my phone..
[+] hnriot|12 years ago|reply
I don't understand this at all. You read hn and yet you think the world looks alien because most people small hand held computers around with them??? To be honest this sounds like some attention seeking gesture, so people ask you about your "radical" smartphone-free lifestyle, especially since you prefixed your comment with "not that anyone cares".

there's nothing alien about using a smartphone. it's a natural progression and people are avid consumers of entertainment, so when it goes hand held it's a no brainer that it will be popular. Not to mention all the useful things they do.

you're not without social media, you're commenting on hn?

[+] blisterpeanuts|12 years ago|reply
Good for you AlexanderDhoore. You don't need that stuff to have a great life.
[+] chestnut-tree|12 years ago|reply
Pinterest is actually a fantastic resource for finding visual inspiration e.g. illustrations, graphic design, typography, product design, app design etc.

A lot of people think it's filled with mostly cupcakes and kitten pics (I used to think that too), but it's actually one of the best places to visit online if you're doing visual research.

If you're interested in the above design topics, here are some example boards to help you start browsing:

http://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/pinterest-boards-812...

[+] tootie|12 years ago|reply
That's probably 1% of their user base if that. I'm guessing because I've only ever visited pinterest by accident and don't actually know what it's for or how it works.
[+] edgarvaldes|12 years ago|reply
Same with reddit. People tend to forget about well curated pinboards or subreddits.
[+] vosper|12 years ago|reply
"For these sites ... critical mass is crucial: you won’t visit a site if no one else is using it."

This is not as true for Pinterest, which has a standalone use as a nice visual bookmarking tool - my wife uses Pinterest heavily (mostly for cooking and fashion) and isn't engaged in the social aspects at all.

[+] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
Other than looking for jobs, does anyone here actually use LinkedIn in a social capacity? I feel like I end up going to their site more from link bait than from actual interest in finding content there.
[+] kccreator|12 years ago|reply
I do also wonder how much Pinterest use is more passive even than Twitter. Sure, there are lots of Twitter bots and lurkers, but everyone I know on Pinterest complains that they get into an unusable state where they just keep "pinning" things from badges all over the web, but have too much junk pinned to manage/reference/use.
[+] akcreek|12 years ago|reply
I use Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com/anthonycreek/), but I'm quite selective of what I pin so I can easily see and appreciate everything on my boards. I also only have a handful of boards.

I see people with dozens of boards and thousands (even tens of thousands) of pins. I don't know what the point of that is unless you are trying to simply grow your following by being everywhere.

[+] simbolit|12 years ago|reply
Google+ does not make it into the top-five mix — not because of its lack of popularity; but because Pew says it did not include it in its survey questions.

BAM! :-)

[+] antonioevans|12 years ago|reply
It's a Phone survey. I'll leave it at that.
[+] dschiptsov|12 years ago|reply
Media manipulations for a next big IPO?)