The rise and rise of Pinterest and our love of Digital Curation

Posted on 16th Feb 2012 by Scott Goodson in Blog

There’s a new movement underway. If you haven’t come across Pinterest yet, you soon will do. It’s a new virtual pinboard site that everyone’s talking about. It allows you to easily share visual things you’ve discovered online with your followers. You simply browse the web, spot something that inspires you and ‘pin’ it onto one of your boards. It’s as simple as that.

And if you look at recent stats, it’s clearly becoming the next big thing. The number of visitors went up nearly 430% between September and December last year, reaching 7.21million users worldwide. That’s a huge leap and one that really makes you sit up and take notice.

What’s even more fascinating is that Pinterest drives more web traffic to other sites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. That’s combined.

So why the sudden surge in popularity? After all, Pinterest has been around since early 2010 and it’s been a bit of a slow burner. Well, it’s down to several reasons.

There’s currently a big love of visual communication. We can’t get enough of poring over stunning images of people, places, fashion, food and photography. Nothing supports this movement more than Pinterest.

You also have to consider our increasingly busy lives and how they have determined our Internet habits. Today, we haven’t got time to hang about. We want things fast. Pinterest allows us do to this and quickly make sense of the masses of information out there.

It’s also a ‘digital curation of content’, something that has become the new buzzword in digital circles. It means we bring content together in one space and share it with others. Of course, curation has been around for some time. We’ve already seen it with RSS feeds, Twitter and even blogs. Pinterest is now taking it one step further and allowing us to share anything we come across on the web. Buzzword or not, ‘curation’ is here to stay.

Then what about those privacy issues surrounding certain social media? It seems we’re growing tired of exchanging our personal information for free access to things like Facebook. Pinterest isn’t personal, so it’s less invasive. It’s more about sharing what we love with like-minded people.

Which brings me onto my final point… Pinterest is popular because it feeds our insatiable appetite to share the things we’re passionate about. It allows us to start movements of our own, pointing others to things we like and enjoy.

If you’re a brand, how do you make the most of this viral marketing platform? Well, you get involved, you start pinning and you join the millions of people who are signing up and creating all sorts of virtual pinboards across the globe. You understand that Pinterest drives more traffic than three of the biggest social networks combined. And you tap into a digital world of curation, sharing and visual inspiration. It’s the future and it’s happening right now.