Pinterest : The new social network to harness our collective intelligence

Just added by President Obama to its social networks, Pinterest is the new «place to be» on the Internet. Launched in March 2010, the site initially works only on invitation. Even if it is still the case, you can now just ask for an invitation on the website. In 2011, it was listed in the «50 Best Websites of 2011» in Time’s Magazine and its rise is exponential as the iconographic shows it :

Even if, its growth-rate tends to slow down to reasonable level : ‘’only’’ 18% between mid-february and mid-march in comparison to the 85% between mid-january and mid-february. 

But, what is Pinterest? and how can it harness our collective intelligence?

Pinterest means «pin your interests» and is described as an online pin-board. Once registered, you can share pictures and videos with the community by adding them to one of your thematic albums, called boards. Adding a content is called «pinning». 

The entire community has access to your pins : each member can like them, comment them or repin them (= adding them to its own board). Like on Twitter, you can follow a member : you will be notified at each time he pins something. 

Pinterest is not a simple new trendy element in the jungle of the social networks, it is especially a new tool of the Web 2.0 to harness Collective Intelligence. Its most interesting aspect is not really the «social network» part but its search engine. It allows to seek for ideas or inspirations in all the content pinned and labeled by the members of the community. It’s one of the concept presented by Tim O’Reilly as folksonomy, which refers to a «style of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords (tags). It allows for the kind of multiple, overlapping associations than the brain itself uses». As Dave Hryckiewicz highlights it,  by pinning and labeling, users provides valuable meta-data, that can be very appealing for companies like Google or Microsoft to improve their image search. Thus, even if Pinterest claims that profits aren’t its ultimate goal for the moment, it already have a great potential for investors.

Pinterest is also a new mean for viral marketing, defined by Tim O’Reilly as the «recommendations propagating directly from one user to an other». Pictures of items generally comes from e-shop website. By pinning them, you indirectly make advertising for a brand and your followers just have to click on them to be immediately redirected toward the e-shop. Aware of this new powerful tool, many videos and websites give tips to companies to increase their visibility through Pinterest. Most of them, not only advise to be active on the site by opening a count and pinning pictures of their business but also to try to encourage people to take photos of their products and to pin them. By making the individuals pinning themselves, the real marketing driven forces are hidden, making the advice looked innocent.

This responds to the logic of affective economics defined by Jenkins as a «new marketing theory ground within the media industry, which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumers decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions» (Jenkins, Convergence Culture, p.62).

Some brands have even used Pinterest in a more active way. Kotex for example, ran the first Pinterest campaign : the brand selected 50 inspiring women and sent them personalized gifts, in exchange, they just had to pin their gifts onto their board. According to the brand, the campaign was successful : the selected  women being highly socially networked had numerous followers and also posted on Facebook and Twitter, which permitted to the brand to have a large audience and to be present on different networks. The video explains the operation in details : 

This operation clearly correspond to the new motto of marketers who try to shape brand reputation no more «through individual transactions but through the total sum of interactions with consumers across a range of different medias (touch point)». (Jenkins, p.63). However, it still hard to really evaluate the effects of that kind of new campaigning in the Long-Run. 

Not exempt from critics notably on the aspect of the copyrights issues or some sources of financing, the website had already have to update its rules of service. It is also already the object of numerous studies, trying to investigate its success, its addictive character or the profile of its members. Moreover, with the new Facebook-App for Timeline allowing to add your pin and your boards to your Timeline, there is no doubt that the success-story  of Pinterest will continue.