The battle for supremacy amongst social networks has become a little quiet lately. Facebook still maintains its premier status, Twitter growth has slowed but is established and Google + has been likened to gym membership – we all join but rarely go! The rest like Myspace and Bebo have simply fallen away beset by technical and usability issues.
Pinterest has been around for a couple of years, a place with a largely female and American audience, where people share ideas on design, fashion, travel, books – or anything else you can think of – by “pinning” photos to their various online boards. Effectively Pinterest provides multiple mood boards that you can either start yourself, collaborate, comment or contribute an image. Unusually the early adopters appear not to be the usual geeks, with mainstream subjects as fashion, design and travel being some of the first popular topics.
The website was the third fastest growing in the US in January 2012 and is starting to attract the interest of corporates and retailers. Like other social networks that have come and gone, it’s difficult to predict what will succeed long-term but Pinterest seems to tick a lot of boxes on what makes a social network succeed.
See BBC’s Rory Cellen-Jones’ view here: Pinterest – hot new network or another Quora?
