Pinterest, a social photo sharing website, has taken the online world by storm ever since its prototype was launched in March 2010. There has been a deluge of social networks making it large, each bigger than the other. Facebook is still head and shoulders above the others but we’ve seen Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and Pinterest, all hog the limelight.
Pinterest hit 10 million monthly US uniques faster than any other site and this is no mean feat. Pinterest is the 16th most popular site in the US while 74th in India currently. 4.6% of the Pinterest users come from India and they generate 3.8% of the pageviews on Pinterest.
Pinterest is also known to bring in huge amounts of referral traffic. Here are a few numbers to prove the point:
Even though the growth has stabilized over the last month, Pinterest grew at a phenomenal rate in the US till now and the steep growth curve can be visualized here:
The grand success of Pinterest has spawned many clones some of which have turned into competition. For instance, there is Singterest which is Pinterest for Singapore.
Colin Boyd launched Singterest and had tweeted on March 20th
Someone said you don’t make money doing as others do, but you can if you do it in a different place.
Well, this has an ounce of rational if one stretches the limits but there are more blatant clones like Pinspire which definitely don't inspire much innovation.
There are others like fyndesters.com and snip.it too. One out of this lot which stands out; Sworly.com, Pinterest for audiophiles. This is an excellent tweak and has the potential to become bigger.
One more interesting fact is that more than 65% of users on Pinterest are women making it a strong woman-driven network.
The numbers and clones bear enough testimony to the popularity of Pinterest. With referral traffic numbers at par with Twitter, Pinterest is definitely an excellent tool for startups to push their product. Many have already taken advantage of this tool and others will be joining the bandwagon soon. Have you started using Pinterest to promote your brand? How else do you leverage Pinterest?
- Jubin Mehta
