
Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top - adidash
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/30/pew-social-networking/
======
shrikant
This sounded... difficult to believe, so I thought I'd read the actual report
on the Pew website.[0]

They seem to use "social media website" interchangeably with the actual apps
in question, and their methodology writeup doesn't mention the actual
questions they asked in their telephone surveys.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if more people used the Pinterest _website_
more than the Twitter website, as the latter seems more oriented to being a
website. It would appear that Twitter has way more users overall as compared
to Pinterest though.

    
    
      Pinterest: "50 million unique monthly users worldwide" [1]
      Twitter: 117 million monthly active tweeting users [2]
    

So headline should technically be "Pinterest website passed Twitter website in
popularity ..."

[0] [http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-Media-
Update/Main...](http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-Media-Update/Main-
Findings.aspx?view=all)

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20131023/pinterest-does-another-
massiv...](http://allthingsd.com/20131023/pinterest-does-another-massive-
funding-225-million-at-3-8-billion-valuation/)

[2] [http://blog.peerreach.com/2013/11/4-ways-how-twitter-can-
kee...](http://blog.peerreach.com/2013/11/4-ways-how-twitter-can-keep-
growing/)

~~~
ceejayoz
I'd suspect a much larger proportion of Twitter users are things like RSS feed
bots, though.

~~~
X4
I would really love to see some numbers on that, but thanks to the IPO we will
never have any insight into that. They have to make up numbers like that, or
they lose money.

 _" It is an advertising-based business. Twitter also sells data. It will
generate about $583 million this year. Twitter is expected to generate a
little less than $1 billion in 2014, according to eMarketer.

Most of Twitter's revenue comes from three types of ads, although it plans to
have a more robust advertising offering next year."_

Aha!

~~~
pessimizer
Fake Twitter Followers Become Multimillion-Dollar Business

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/fake-twitter-
follow...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/fake-twitter-followers-
becomes-multimillion-dollar-business/?_r=0)

Over 27% of the Top 10 Twitter Accounts’ Followers Are Fake

[http://www.webpronews.com/over-27-of-the-top-10-twitter-
acco...](http://www.webpronews.com/over-27-of-the-top-10-twitter-accounts-
followers-are-fake-2012-08)

5% of Twitter Users Are Fake _[reports Twitter in S-1]_

[http://investorplace.com/2013/10/5-of-twitter-users-are-
fake...](http://investorplace.com/2013/10/5-of-twitter-users-are-fake/)

edit: 1 in 10 Twitter accounts is fake, say researchers

[http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/1-10-twitter-accounts-
fake...](http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/1-10-twitter-accounts-fake-say-
researchers-2D11655362)

~~~
ryguytilidie
Even if 60% of Twitter's users were fake they would still have more active
users than Pinterest so the title is still pretty misleading.

~~~
pessimizer
I'd bet Pinterest has more non-member users, though. Very few people read
tweets who aren't members of Twitter. With no evidence, I'd bet that Pinterest
has more people looking at galleries of pictures who don't feel a need to
register.

~~~
ZoF
I doubt it.

Oh look, these are opinions, not facts. What a pointless diatribe.

~~~
ceejayoz
Without direct access to their analytics and backends, educated guesses are
the best thing available.

------
AlexanderDhoore
(Not that anyone cares, but:) I'm a 23 year-old without social media or
smartphone. I consider myself a science experiment. The world is looking more
alien to me every single day.

For example: last night I was watching the Vergecast [1]. The last episode is
literally 90 minutes of four adult men bitching about social media smartphone
apps! It's insane.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204758/the-
vergecast-105...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/12/5204758/the-
vergecast-105-decmeber-12th-2013)

~~~
cases
If you're watching the Vergecast and posting about it on HN then you're not
that much of an outsider as you think you are. No one of my friends or family
your age are on Twitter or Pinterest and maybe half are on Facebook. It's easy
to think the whole world is into social media when you're reading about it
every day, but the majority of people have no idea what any of this means or
are even remotely interested in it.

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
That would be good news. (Although I'm pretty sure almost every 23 year-old
here has Facebook.)

~~~
BlackDeath3
23-year-old here. No Facebook.

~~~
cclogg
Same with me lol. Only have an account for developer purposes since I have to
put it in every app I work on haha.

~~~
BlackDeath3
I was really into MySpace and because of that I just sort of naturally
transitioned into Facebook probably somewhere around 2007-2008 (I don't
remember exactly). Though MySpace served as a typical teen social tool
throughout junior high and high school, it became less interesting to me after
graduation (strangely enough, right around the time you start seeing less of
your friends in-person) as I spent more time with fewer people (family and my
girlfriend, mainly).

Right around the time that my girlfriend and I went off to university
together, I pretty much just stopped using it. All of the (little) social
interaction I felt I needed was satisfied in-person, and so I didn't really
need it anymore. I used Facebook a couple of times (quite literally), but at
some point I got fed up with hearing everybody talk about it all the time (I
think the foregone conclusion that "everybody has one!" really irked me), so I
looked at it all, realized that I really didn't use it, and deleted
everything.

Though I still get the occasional friend trying to convince me to come back, I
haven't, and I've been OK. I really don't need another Internet distraction,
and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything substantial because of it.

~~~
whatusername
Wait till you have kids. Facebook works really well as a "sharing photos of
the grand-kids" for all of those grandparents and great-aunts around the
country/world

~~~
BlackDeath3
Yeah, that's still more of an "if" than a "when". It's often more energy than
it's worth dealing with other people now, let alone children.

------
chestnut-tree
Pinterest is actually a fantastic resource for finding visual inspiration e.g.
illustrations, graphic design, typography, product design, app design etc.

A lot of people think it's filled with mostly cupcakes and kitten pics (I used
to think that too), but it's actually one of the best places to visit online
if you're doing visual research.

If you're interested in the above design topics, here are some example boards
to help you start browsing:

[http://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/pinterest-
boards-812...](http://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/pinterest-
boards-812533)

~~~
tootie
That's probably 1% of their user base if that. I'm guessing because I've only
ever visited pinterest by accident and don't actually know what it's for or
how it works.

------
vosper
"For these sites ... critical mass is crucial: you won’t visit a site if no
one else is using it."

This is not as true for Pinterest, which has a standalone use as a nice visual
bookmarking tool - my wife uses Pinterest heavily (mostly for cooking and
fashion) and isn't engaged in the social aspects at all.

------
unklefolk
If you look at the 'Frequency of social media site use' graph though Twitter
is far more popular on a daily basis than Pinterest. This seems a more
significant statistic.

[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screen-s...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screen-
shot-2013-12-30-at-17-14-14.png?w=320&h=640)

~~~
Touche
Significant in what way? Pinterest users are (often, not always) looking to
buy things.

~~~
unklefolk
Significant in that the title is "Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity..."
so if you decide to judge popularity by page requests then I suspect twitter
may be more 'popular' than Pinterest.

This theory is backed up by
[http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global;0](http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global;0)
where Twitter is 12th and Pinterest is 30th.

Of course, popularity doesn't pay the bills!

------
joeblau
Other than looking for jobs, does anyone here actually use LinkedIn in a
social capacity? I feel like I end up going to their site more from link bait
than from actual interest in finding content there.

------
kccreator
I do also wonder how much Pinterest use is more passive even than Twitter.
Sure, there are lots of Twitter bots and lurkers, but everyone I know on
Pinterest complains that they get into an unusable state where they just keep
"pinning" things from badges all over the web, but have too much junk pinned
to manage/reference/use.

~~~
akcreek
I use Pinterest
([http://www.pinterest.com/anthonycreek/](http://www.pinterest.com/anthonycreek/)),
but I'm quite selective of what I pin so I can easily see and appreciate
everything on my boards. I also only have a handful of boards.

I see people with dozens of boards and thousands (even tens of thousands) of
pins. I don't know what the point of that is unless you are trying to simply
grow your following by being everywhere.

------
simbolit
_Google+ does not make it into the top-five mix — not because of its lack of
popularity; but because Pew says it did not include it in its survey
questions._

BAM! :-)

------
antonioevans
It's a Phone survey. I'll leave it at that.

------
dschiptsov
Media manipulations for a next big IPO?)

