We Heart It, a social network with 30M users | Hacker News Reader

We Heart It, a social network with 30M users

washingtonpost.com

60 pointsxux18 comments

>things beloved primarily by women and children are the exact things the mainstream marginalizes

Is that really true? Pinterest seems to be pretty popular and is considered a "must have" in terms of social media strategy. There's huge markets in women's magazines, stores like Kohls and Payless as mentioned in the article, Curves, Weight Watchers, and don't forget the makeup and popular music industries. Taylor Swift isn't singing to all the men or old women in the audience.

It seems to me that women and children basically define mainstream.

Most mainstream music (i.e. stuff that makes it into Billboard's charts) is obviously targeted at teenagers and maybe people in their young 20's. I'd say the same thing is true about movies. I guess I wouldn't call any of this for "children" though but I guess this becomes a boring semantic argument at this point.

Tangentially, now that I'm over 30 it's starting to become painfully obvious that new music is geared towards younger people. I don't want to be one of those people who are stuck listening to music of their youth, but its so difficult to find things that appeal to me. I.e. music and films that are mature but still are progressing and not relying nostalgia.

More accurately, I think families define the mainstream. A superhero movie that is PG-13 makes a lot more money than a superhero movie that is R rated for example.

Pinterest is largely an anomaly though. It celebrates things that aren't really embraced in any other major platform, and the only reason it is acknowledged (IMO) is because of how much audience it has captured.

Based on the description of this platform, Pinterest sounds like its closest analogue.

It's not even close to true. Women and children are the largest consumer group in the US, and are soon to become the largest consumer group in the entire world. Women control the vast majority of every day spending in the US to the point where most advertising and marketing is meant for women in one way or another. You're completely right, in that women and children do define the mainstream.

[1] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2013/u-s--women-c...

[2] http://www.unpac.ca/economy/consumers.html

[3] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator

That's why you'll often see men portrayed as idiots in commercials. The ads are really aimed at women, and this is a marketing strategy proven to work.

The bad thing about WeHeartIt is that people post images on it without sourcing them. So if you're searching for where a specific image came from, and somehow end up on weheartit page, then tough luck. Worse yet, they're often reposted to Tumblr which only increases the spread of unsourced images.

Weheartit is pretty fascinating actually. It isn't a household name in the states because it is a Brazilian product if I recall correctly. It's also older than pinterest, and almost the exact same model (image clipping from the web). I suspect pinterest was heavily inspired by it.

Another thing that keeps it interesting is that it was created by one guy, and is almost entirely bootstrapped. They only recently raised outside capital mid last year (http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/27/weheartit-raises-8m-for-it...). Reminds me a lot of imgur.

It is founded by a brazilian designer in Brazil... but I think it always adressed the "english speaking market". This is not huge in Brazil, for example.

That said, I guess not being in USA is why it is not a household name (as it came before Pinterest, as you said). Not because it started in brazilian market, but because its founder lacks the right environment and connections. Pinterest got heavily funded and exploded, I have the impression that Weheartit was a little bit hesitant about being funded on a crucial time. The slow and steady strategy worked fine for them, but I guess they missed the opportunity to be Pinterest.

Just my opinions about it, and I have no insider info of any kind on this.

I find this website way more fascinating than Instagram or Pinterest. The name and the visual appeal is a bit too girly also.

* SPOILER: I'm a man

Alexa Global Rank 1,124
May have 30M users but engagement is pretty poor.

But how many people in the under 25 demographic install Alexa toolbar vs the older generations?

Every time someone mentions Alexa numbers, I pull out this quote (by me):
"Alexa numbers are as accurate as a monkey throwing darts at a board. Having been privy to various website's actual numbers, Alexa numbers aren't even accurate relative to each other. All they measure is the use of your website amongst people who run Windows and are willing to install an Adware toolbar."

It shouldn't come as a surprise that every X months there's a new teen thing. IIRC, FormSpring was one such thing that seems to have faded from the zeitgeist. Will be interesting to see which way SnapChat, Yo, etc. go.

I understand your sentiment, but I know weheartit has been around for a long time at this point (circa 2008). It always reminded me of a Pinterest alternative.

Everyone went to Ask.fm instead.

Every 9-12 months, a batch of trend setters go to college and a new thing is emerges in a group that loves new things.

Weheartit is 8+ years old. They didn't build 30 million users in the last few months. New to you, doesn't mean new.

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