Social Shopping: Everything about the Pinterest phenomenon

By Marcel Weiß and Jochen Krisch

Exactly one year ago, Anissa Stettner from handmade2.0 has outlined here, what's so special about Pinterest ("Die neue Ästethik des Social Shopping"):

"Pinterest is more than just a crossover of FFFound and tumblr. Rather, it is a successful fusion of concepts such as ThisNext, flickr and tumblr and for this reason it is so compelling, because in fact one could almost put aside membership of four different platforms, including the respective activities such as commenting, posting, re-posting and interacting with the community."

It has taken a while until Pinterest had created some ripples. However, at the moment it is receiving a ton of attention - despite the fact that Pinterest is still invite-only and, until now, is mostly directed at women ("A Guy's Guide To Pinterest"):

"One of the first things I noticed when I signed up for Pinterest earlier this week is that several of my female friends and acquaintances were already on the site. 

Of the 16 people Pinterest said I knew who were already using the site, 14 were women. Over the course of the first day, five more women I know added me and I suddenly felt like I had ventured behind some secret curtain.

That is not surprising: in December, Mashable reported that 59 percent of the site's visitors were women between the ages of 25 and 44, and that 58 percent of its visitors in the previous 12 weeks had been female."

Arik Hanson has interviewed 15 female Pinterest power users ("What's behind the Pinterest craze?").

With its focus on content curation, Pinterest is a top trend, writes Elad Gil. According to him, what we witness at the moment is ..:

"[..] the evolution of social media from long-form to push-button, the emergence of social curation on sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, and the move to structured sets of curated content on Pinterest and its brethren."

Why push buttons and one-click gestures can be a very powerful tool, I have described on neunetz.com in 2010. In my presentation at the Live Shopping Days 2011 I have, besides other topics, pointed out how those and other elements of the social web could be used for eCommerce.

Interestingly, the fact that sites such as Pinterest are presented in such a structured way has developed into a unique feature when compared to Facebook and others.

David King has pointed out an interesting insight - by constructing content in a structured set versus a stream, sites such as Pinterest and Snip.It have prevented stream-based sites such as Facebook from becoming a compelling place to consume the Pinterest or Snip.It content (which contrasts with e.g. Instagram or other stream based sites)."

By the way, Pinterest & Co are not entirely unproblematic according to German copyright laws, because in this country there is no Fair Use policy like in the USA. We have mentioned this already when introducing The Fancy.

Content curation with regard to photos is very close to copying them and could therefore be viewed as the well-known file sharing issue in a revamped version. This could become problematic for the Pinterest clone Pinspire - if by way of precaution they would not be based in Italy.

Already there is an Open Source project called openPIN.org that wants to provide an alternative to the established services.

Until now, Pinterest has collected 37.5 million $ in total in three series.

Earlier posts on this subject:

• Pinterest und die neue Ästhetik des Social Shopping (German)
• The Fancy: Luxuskonzern PPR investiert 10 Mio. Dollar in Shopping-Tumblr (German)
• Gender Innovation: Wer knackt den Online-Code der Frauen? (German)
• Citydropz: Ist es so schwer, den Social Shopping Nerv zu treffen? (German)
• K5: Wie Stylight Frauenherzen höher schlagen lassen will (German)
• Ein-Klick-Gesten und das Social-Web-Pattern im E-Commerce (German)

 

Comments

[Ed]

Don't click on
"Arik Hanson has interviewed 15 female Pinterest power users ("What's behind the Pinterest craze?" "

It links to a virus!

[Ecommerce software]

It likes an emerging social networking site, a combination of images, people that offers a great resources for people those are added in such networks.

[Jeff]

There are social shopping sites, a simple objective to get the right information quickly is luboh.com it allows people to ask and tell their selected friends and also tell the world anonymously. Useful for people anywhere in the world to find how much products and services cost and where they can get them from. It also has price comparisons within a geolocation.