Pinterest, The New Player In Social Consumerism

When Groupon came out it was all the rage and made social consumerism into a multi-billion business (wish I had thought of it), the company is not a favourite with the investment community at the moment, but they are still enjoying success. Many retailers benefited from Groupon’s business model and we as consumers enjoyed the spin-off. Now there’s new player slowly emerging in the social consumer arena. This new player is Pinterest.

Pinterest is a new online service (currently guesstimated to be worth about US$200 million) that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can use Pinterest to create pinboards to plan your parties, decorate your home, and organize your music or book collection. You can then share your pinboard with others or you can also browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. Pinterest lets visitors group items into categories and share them with others. Persons can then see your pinboard and make comments about those items shown. Currently most of the site’s images are of items concerning home decor, crafts, fashion, and food, but this can easily grow into many other items.

I see a lot of potential for this new service especially from the marketing side of things and I do believe that companies should begin to allocate some of their marketing budget to these social networks. The mere fact that Google rolled out social search results a few years ago, is a clear indication that businesses should take note of the importance of social consumerism. Personally I tend to view information or products that my colleagues have already viewed and commented on first, from search results before looking at other information or products. That’s because I want to see what their opinions are as it relates to that information or product.

Pinterest is currently by invitation only, which means there is probably a long waiting list. I’m still waiting on my invite (which I’m told can be as long as two months), and is fast becoming a contender for a spot on the the top 10 social networking websites. Check out the latest infographic below from Monetate that introduces you to Pinterest and provides you with an idea as to how you can use the website to promote products, build community, and drive website traffic and conversions.

If you’re already a Pinterest member, drop us a comment and let us know how you’ve been using it and what your experience with the service is like.

UPDATE [Feb. 16, 2012 - 5:15pm]: Got my invite, setup my account.  I’ve got 4 invites to hand out. Follow me on twitter (@kirrinjones) or send me an e-mail (kirrinjones@gmail.com) and I’ll send you one. Will play around with it and hopefully give you a followup articles in a few days.

Pinterest Invitation

All About Pinterest