Recently the latest figures have come out about the community of Pinterest. The "experts" claimed the sky was falling since viewership had dropped from ten million, to a measly eight million. I don't dispute the numbers, but I'm not worried in the slightest either. Pinterest is a young social media platform that is quickly changing, and as it changes those who have left will come back. I'm going to cover what will always be Pinterest staples, the meat and potato content; and what I think the content will become in the near future.
It is estimated that 97% percent of Pinterest users are women. As a woman myself, I want to be in a comfortable setting with fellow women discussing women oriented subjects. In Pinterest there isn't any talking or in depth discussions, just the occasional comment. However, women do speak loudly on Pinterest by what we pin, and what we display on our boards. The content that will always be popular on Pinterest are weddings, and adorable animals (you know the type of picture where the cat is looking in the camera with big sad eyes). Let me further clarify that last sentence. By weddings I mean everything and anything that has to do with weddings. Cakes, decorations, dresses, jewelry, you name it it will always be a big hit on Pinterest. For adorable animals, well who really can resist that?
You may have noticed I didn't mention pictures of men or kids. The majority of content on Pinterest about men and kids are idealized content. The perfect man, the most innocent and beautiful of children. Absolutely as far from reality as you can get! That content will always be popular, but there will be never enough content to satisfy the demand due to lack of perfection of both. In addition, we are more in tune with our feelings and less visual than men. We like our eye-candy, just not as much.
What will the future bring for Pinterest? My crystal ball is at the shop, but I can take a guess or two. One trend I'm seeing is for longer posts. It use to be where you would post a picture of a cake, a quite beautiful cake, and that would get you tons of repins. Not as much anymore. People like to be inspired by pretty things, but they also want to know how to make them too. If you're going to post content about a dessert, you better show how it's made. Content is going from the purely inspirational to a more detailed version. If you are creating content, you may post less; but you'll have more repins from people interested on how to do it themselves.
Another thing I see is longer content. Instead of one picture being used, now two or three pictures put together are needed for one posting. If you have a lot of pictures on a subject you have to put them together now to be seen. You cannot send them out one picture at a time, because your content will be missed when it's mixed in with all the noise of other postings. Also, the longer the posting the harder it is to miss when scrolling down.
Once facet that is ignored on Pinterest is videos. When you log onto Pinterest, at the top is a video category for everyone to see. This has to be the most ignored category on Pinterest! I swear the only people that end up there are the ones who accidentally clicked on it. If you happen to find yourself in the video section, you'll notice that not a single video has been repinned. I call it the great Pinterest pin desert! This will change as the content becomes more detailed. Personally, I would estimate that in four to six months before people become aware that videos on Pinterest exist. For the early trend setters out there, this is where the repins of the future will take place. Videos made mostly by women, for a woman audience.
To the experts who think that Pinterest is starting to go down; I say you are dead wrong. Pinterest is going through growing pains as the pinners learn the platform. I'm here to tell you it's going to stay, but it's going to be more sophisticated website one year from now than it is today; and that is why that two million will be back.
Veronica Maddox
http://www.pinterestpatron.com
"Now YOU Can Create Professional 3D Animations, Games And Graphic Models Like Pixar and Dreamworks In 2 Hours or Less..."
