Report: 92 Percent Of Pinterest Pins Made By Women

Pinterest has a nearly $4 billion valuation. It would be a very likely Yahoo acquisition candidate but for that huge valuation (and its own potential IPO aspirations).

In its roughly four years of existence Pinterest has proven itself to be an extremely valuable social network, driving massive social sharing. It also has shown both its e-commerce potential and growing offline retail influence.

But its most powerful attribute is undoubtedly its dedicated audience of overwhelmingly female pinners.

Source: RJMetrics

Analytics platform RJMetrics examined a data set of “50,000 random pinners and their pins” to analyze usage trends and demographics on Pinterest. What the company found (or confirmed) was that the site is overwhelmingly used by women, a large majority of whom (84 percent) are still active four years after joining the site.

According to RJMetrics’ analysis 80 percent of Pinterest users are female. Beyond this, more than 90 percent of all pins are created/shared by women. There are apparently “15x more pins by women than by men” on the site.

Source: RJMetrics

The firm also says that “the percentage of pins made by men has been consistently declining since July of 2011.”

Of all the social networks Pinterest behavior is arguably most in alignment with commerce. People use the site to get ideas for a wide range of activities from home improvement to cooking to travel. This makes commercial content on the site more “viable” and less at odds with user behavior than, say, on Facebook.

Indeed Pinterest user behavior is not unlike search activity, though often more “aspirational” and less “directional” than search.

The gender insights are important because in many developed countries around the world, women control most of the household spending. In the US something like 70+ percent of spending is dictated or controlled by women.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)