Pinning The Competition: Pinterest’s Four-Digit Growth Is Tops Of 2012

The big three sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) are about to become the big four. Pinterest is here to stay and was the clear cut winner in Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report. Pinterest showed the most growth year-over-year for social desktop usage, social web usage and social app usage.

Pinterest saw a 1,047% increase in unique PC visitors, and is aiming to surpass LinkedIn this year. The social site that show the next highest growth was Google+ that saw an 80% increase in traditional web users.  Pinterest’s mobile growth also dwarfed the competition. The popular bookmarking site was up 1,698% in mobile app usage (next highest growth was Twitter +134%) and a whopping 4,225% on the mobile web (next highest was Reddit +153%.

Not only are people using Pinterest, but they are engaging as well. Pinterest ranked 4^th in total minutes used on mobile apps, up 6,056% from last year.

Females still dominate Pinterest’s usage, making up the overwhelming majority of the audience. Females make up 84% of all mobile app users, 72% of mobile web users and 70% of all PC users. The network is also comprised of a rare20-20 year old market. The two largest age brackets of Pinterest users are 35-49 year olds and 25-34 year olds with the younger segment owning a larger portion of app usage. Additionally, over 75% of all Pinterest users are white, with Hispanics making up an extra 20%.

It should be noted that another booming network in 2012, Instagram, was left off of Nielsen’s list. For more information, see the official Nielsen report.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.