If someone asks
what is Pinterest? Simply put, it’s a social network that can be
accessed on the web from your laptop or through your phone through its app.
However, that simple answer won’t do this site justice since it is much more
than just a social network.
Pinterest was founded by Ben
SIlbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp, developed in December 2009 and has
begun its journey upward since then. It originally had around 5,000 members
which doubled and now became millions. What exactly is it then?
It’s an online
pinboard and you pin stuff that you like onto it. After you sign up, you can
follow other people’s pinboards and follow them. Whatever the interest is, it’s
called a pin and “like’ in Pinterest-speak is
“Repin” so it saves the pin onto a board. You can create a pin for
others to repin and so on.
Pins are all about
more general categories like sports, food, travel, shopping. The more unique
ones are geek and DIY crafts. The app is free to download on both android and
apple softwares, free to sign up in and quite addictive because you
continuously see things you like. Your pins can also be the one being repinned
on and on and you get a chance to meet the other netizens who share the same
quirks you do.
What makes Pinterest
so special? Well, according to www.digitaltrends.com
there are 4 words that make it different from other social networks:
USE LOOK WANT NEED
Research has shown
that the members of Pinterest are more the consumer types looking for
what they like, use, want, or need. Making the opportunities for purchasing
higher when compared to other social networks where the focus is more on
communication, what’s happening now or news. Pinterest is an online
board with a collection of images rather than a page full of text.
For marketing
research, this site can prove to be extremely useful since it caters to the
masses’ common grounds. If a common has no pin, members could simply create one
and others can repin the images on and spread it to their followers and so on.
Users on the site are more interested in products and services; it won’t be
difficult for market researchers to take advantage of this application.
The best thing is
that since mobile research is booming, it’s so much easier to reach out to the
netizens who love to pin
, repin and follow.