Strong Opinions @marksbirch

joshuanguyen:

“It’s no surprise that women use Pinterest more than men,” says Soraya Darabi, a New York-based digital brand strategist and co-founder of Foodspotting.com. “It has a very feminine script and interface, and the scheme is pink.”

spiers:

…I also think Pinterest’s success has more to do with early adoption by a certain cross section of Middle America that’s part of the online scrapbooking community because it’s more about collecting images/things (scrapbooking, in a way) than creating prose, but allows for community interaction in a more obvious and easy to use way than most photo services. Function over form.  Maybe aesthetics help, but I don’t think they’re the primary driver. Nor should we assume that making something pink and feminine will make it appeal to women. 

Pinterest is appealing for one simple reason, Pinterest is the ultimate online instant gratification engine.  It marries the attention grabbing nature of notifications, the comfort of social acceptance, the virality of instant sharing, and the addictiveness of pictures as a medium.  It also appeals heavily to our human need to provide order in the world through the collections created by users.

Most social networks die because it is hard to get started.  It simply takes too much effort when most folks are already invested in something else, generally Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.  Pinterest created a user experience that eliminates much of that effort.  All you have to do is click around the web and “Pin” the things you like into a collection.  It is similar to the Facebook Like button, without the baggage of what that means.  Within short order, people are “pinning” your stuff and the notifications start flowing in.  It makes people feel good that someone is validating their tastes.  Think about it, what are the fashion magazines other than a massive collection of pictures.  Pinterest takes that concept but gives its users the ability to rearrange those static tomes to their own liking and receive confirmation on their good taste.

While the scrapbooking, colors, feminine styles, etc. are part of the equation, those are all smaller drivers as to why women have adopted Pinterest so readily.  Pinterest goes deeper into differences between the way women and men communicate and how that translates into the use of social media.  It is something to think about when you are developing your own socially motivated application and what it takes to drive adoption.

(via joshuanguyen)