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Comment by ishan1121 | Hacker News Reader

Do people really use Pinterest? I never found their website useful.

These comments are boring and increasingly common on HN. On almost every discussion of Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook you'll find comments like these expressing faux incredulity at the prospect that some users find these services valuable. You may not be the target market, but it really isn't difficult to understand why they're popular with minimum effort. At best, these comments convey laziness and an unwillingness to understand other perspectives. At worst, they're often used to assert moral superiority over others that use such "useless" products and services.

True it was a lazy comment. But we can easily imagine a world without these services, and it would be almost entirely better. That takes no effort at all to understand that point of view either.

I couldn't disagree more. Given how popular these services are they're obviously providing some form of utility otherwise they wouldn't be used. Regardless of what kind of utility these users derive, I'm betting the vast majority of them would disagree with your claim. You may think the world would be "better" (whatever that means), but I'm guessing you don't use these services so what difference does it make to you?

Yeah heroin gets used too.

There seems to be a cognitive gap here: on one hand acknowledging these widespread comments from folks with no use for these services, and then insistence that everybody uses them. At the risk of repeating myself, its trivially easy to see the point of view that they're not useful to a large portion of humanity. The irony is thick.

What difference does it make to me? Nothing, except pointing out contradiction. A hobby of mine.

You can't equate a service not being useful to a large portion of humanity as meaning that it's a net negative on the world. That was your claim, but it's not qualified in any way whatsoever or immediately obvious what your viewpoint is when ambiguous descriptors like "better" are used.

I think that just shows how narrow your group of acquaintances is and how out of touch you are with a large part of the world.

250 million people use Pinterest every month. That's (approximately, though lower than) the same ballpark as Snapchat and Twitter.

I assume you are capable of Googling their monthly user numbers, just like I did. So I assume your post is just virtue signalling and not actually asking in the spirit of trying to understand others, since it is obvious that yes, people do use Pinterest.

Define 'use'. If 'use' is getting clickbaited through Google images, then the metric is useless. I can't find demographic data but I'd be super interested in that.

I'm Hispanic and have only met a single Hispanic girl who uses Pinterest, and they're pretty young. The 83% number seems wild to me.

250 million people may be using Pinterest currently, but I don't think Pinterest can maintain this position with just one product. It's outdated and most of the content is just copied from elsewhere. More and more people are shifting to Instagram/Reddit.

I personally know people who were using Pinterest back in 2015-2016 but have since then shifted to Instagram.

How do you make vision boards / collections on instagram/reddit? How do you share them selectively? What do you even think Pinterest is?

Boards/collections are just glorified marketing terms used to convey that Pinterest has something new to offer. Alternatively, I can create a group chat on Insta or I can create a private subreddit and share the interesting links with the people I want to share. I can create multiple Insta chats and subreddits each for different topics.

Of all the social networks, Pinterest has had the most positive influence on my life. My wife has found recipes, various birthday craft ideas, home improvement, and all sorts of other useful and interesting things through it. It has no drama, at least the way she uses it, and has just generally been helpful.

(I don't use it directly; I don't use anything that would be called a "social network" unless you count HN and "reddit, but solely a custom set of non-default subreddits" social networks.)

people on HN probably not that much, not sure. Out in consumer-land it's used quite a bit depending on your target demographic (>83% of US women 25-54 for example). Lots of growth outside of the US as well. I sometimes work with designers (interior, architects and the like) and they seem to use it A LOT. Decent amount of traffic from Pinterest on some sites as well, especially on long-tail stuff. Advertising options weren't available in my country previously, so can't say anything about the ROI.

>83% of US women 25-54 for example

Can you clarify what you mean by this stat? Surely not 83% of US women aged 24-54 use Pinterest?

Why is that hard to believe? I'm 31 and every woman I know uses Pinterest.

This piece of research clearly disagrees with these wild numbers you claim to be normal based on your anecdotal experience: https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2...

Perhaps the numbers mentioned initially refer to everyone who happens to sometimes end up on Pinterest by clicking on an image on Google Image Search?

I used Pinterest's own report https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/how-to-connect-with-t... which pulls that number from comScore apparently. Another report is https://www.statista.com/statistics/408229/us-pinterest-user...

I'm pretty sure Google Image Search is indeed a major contributor.

Teenage and young adult girls love it. Every single one of them has 'pins' for their wedding, hairdos, recipes, decorating ideas, outfits...

I don't know. I think this is what they WANT you to think, honestly. This may have been the case 5 years ago, but from my anecdotal evidence of just asking around friends, family, co-workers, etc. this isn't really the reality anymore. Most of who I have talked about this with find it old, dated, and full of re-posts/spam. I would be curious to see their actual numbers on ACTIVE users, minus their terrible dark patterns to "get" users.

Anecdotally, women I know are using Instagram (event planning, crafts, food exploration) for this now, not Pinterest.

>I would be curious to see their actual numbers on ACTIVE users, minus their terrible dark patterns to "get" users.

Pinterest's S-1 filing[0] on March 22 2019 says their MAU (monthly active users) is ~265 million. It also says the WAU (weekly active users) is 57% of MAU so ~151 million Pinterest accounts log in at least once a week.

Of course, the Pinterest executives could falsify that information on the S-1 to mislead and hype up the IPO but that carries the risk of the SEC slamming them with fraud and the DOJ pursuing criminal charges.

[0] page 67 for user metrics: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1506293/000119312519...

I find it extremely helpful for collecting inspiration for my art / gamedev projects. I also often hire artists and animators and being able to put together a references board for them is extremely helpful and efficient for communicating my vision. [0]

[0] https://www.pinterest.com/thehideoutgames/

It's useful for home remodels. Even the advertising isn't too bothersome since you're looking to buy something.

I know someone who was offered a leadership role at Pinterest. Didn’t take they half a day to decline.

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