Source:www:emarketer.com
Just when it seemed entirely unlikely that another social platform could wrench our attention away from Facebook and Twitter, we’ve been pricked by Pinterest. This somewhat suprising turn of events reminded me of something I learned back in my school days.
Source: Retro Rebirth blog http://retrorebirth.wordpress.com/
In a discussion on current events, my teacher used shoe styles to explain the ethos of the counterculture movement of the early ’70s. When the mainstream embraced platform shoes with four-inch-plus wedged heels that thrust the wearer forward, the counterculture laid back on their heel-less Earth shoes. It wasn’t just a matter of going your own way, my teacher said, you had to go in the opposite way, or counterstream. And it didn’t just apply to shoes; the counterculture took the opposing positions on all the issues of the day.
According to an article on eMarketer, smaller sites like Pinterest and Tumblr showed significant traffic increases in the last quarter of 2011, with the trend continuing into the early weeks of 2012. Drawing on results of a survey conducted by comScore, the eMarketer article points out that while Pinterest may now be the seventh leading social site in the U.S. based on the number of unique visitors, the amount of time visitors spend on Pinterest is greater than the amount of time they spend on Twitter.
Small sites of course may grow into mega-sites, but part of their appeal might just be that they aren’t for everyone. It takes more work–and passion about your subject–to cultivate a board on Pinterest than it takes to post a status update on Facebook. On the other hand, for some people coming up with clever things to post is about as hard as it gets. With Pinterest you don’t have to write a word. It’s show-and-tell without the tell.
It will be interesting to see the direction Pinterest takes in the coming year. Will it follow in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter and become one more part of an integrated marketing strategy, or will it embrace its counterculture stature?
Acknowledgments: I may have mangled Dennis Sullivan’s explanation of the counterculture in his discussion of The Greening of America, but at least I remembered it.
