10 Shocking Must-Know Pinterest Stats (The Good, Bad and Ugly)

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Although Pinterest hasn’t seen the same explosive growth as social sites like Twitter and Facebook, it’s growth is still very impressive. Since Pinterest’s launch in 2010 it’s risen to be one of the most popular social media services in the United States.The visual content discovery site is extremely sticky with women, but it has been plagued with difficult growth challenges with both male and international users.

Here are 10 shocking Pinterest stats… the good, the bad, and the ugly.

01) 70+ million people use Pinterest

The last official update of active Pinterest users was 70 million in July 2013 by the French research firm Semiocast. So we can only imagine how many users Pinterest has now. Probably somewhere around 120+ million.

Verdict: Good!

02) 71% of Pinterest users are women

Everyone knew Pinterest’s female user base was high, but 71% is pretty shocking… in a bad way. According to the Wall Street Journal (Jan 2015), Pinterest has a 71% female user base and is the most gender imbalanced social media network in history. WSJ was able to determine this percentage based on Pinterest’s comScore data. Considering that the top searches on Pinterest are all wedding, fashion, food, fitness and home related, it makes total sense. But for Pinterest to grow, they need to engage male users.

For decades, the National Football League (NFL) traditionally had a mostly male fanbase. But over the years they have made bold efforts to engage female football fans. Guess what? It worked. Women now make up 46% of all NFL fans. If the NFL can court females, then Pinterest can court males.

Verdict: Ugly 🙁

03) 42% of US adult women use Pinterest!

According to the Pew Research Center, 42% of all adult American women use Pinterest. This number is incredible. Almost 1/2 of the US female population uses Pinterest.

If you work at a company that caters to women and aren’t active or focusing on Pinterest, then go slap someone into your marketing department. Seeing major fitness related brands, like Under Armour, completely failing on Pinterest is embarrassing. Under Armour has only pinned around 600 images and have less than 14,000 followers.

Verdict: Good!

04) Only 13% of US adult men use Pinterest

After almost completely conquering the entire American female demographic (see above), there’s only one option left for growth, men. But currently only 13% of online male users have Pinterest accounts. If Pinterest can do for home improvement what they’ve done for home decorating, then it shouldn’t be too hard to grow their male user base. It will be interesting to see how Pinterest tries to woo male users this year.

Verdict: Bad

05) Only 8% of European Internet users have a Pinterest account

Unlike other social networks (like WhatsApp) that exploded globally shortly after launch, Pinterest is still struggling to catch on with international users. According to the Global Web Index (Jan 2014) only 8% of European Internet users have Pinterest accounts and sadly only 3% are active. It’s not for lack of trying – the site is available in 22 different languages. But it will probably take some strategic marketing partnerships with key international brands before Pinterest starts to grow globally. Pinterest needs to quickly prioritize their global marketing efforts.

Verdict: Ugly

06) 4.8% of Pinterest users browse during work

People spend most of the day at work. And even though many companies frown on personal social media use at work, Internet traffic always spikes every weekday around lunch time. Networks like Twitter and LinkedIn have legitimate work features and are now mostly considered acceptable to use during work hours. Pinterest isn’t for most professions. Making Pinterest more vital to business productivity, would dramatically increase this percentage. But first Pinterest has to build some business focused features to make that possible.

Verdict: Bad

07) Pinterest users browse an average of 14.8 minutes per session

Most websites and apps are lucky if a user spends 1-2 minutes with their brand. But the average Pinterest user spends an astonishing 14.8 minutes on the site each time they visit. You can attribute this extreme stickiness to the site’s unique (and now often imitated) layout, as well as its carefully user curated content. It’s an incredible statistic and sure to draw envy from anyone who runs a website. Pinterest users clearly find the site useful and extremely sticky.

Verdict: Good!

08) 98 minutes on average per month on Pinterest

Dedicating an hour and a half to anything every month is a major commitment. But when compared to the average American Facebook user, who spends 40 minutes a day on Facebook, Pinterest’s 98 minutes is much less impressive.

Verdict: Bad

09) 9 million connect their Pinterest to Facebook

Roughly 10% of all Pinterest users have connected their Pinterest and Facebook accounts. This is good news for Pinterest. It means their users can share Pinterest content to Facebook’s 1.39 billion users. But this number needs to be much higher. Simple reminders and tooltips in the Pinterest interface would dramatically boost this number almost overnight.

Verdict: Bad

10) Pinterest ranks number 32 in worldwide website popularity

Being included in the top 50 worldwide websites is a huge accomplishment. According to Alexa, Pinterest ranks #32 when compared to all other websites on the Internet. In the United States, Pinterest is #16, just behind Netflix and Tumblr. But as more Internet users make mobile their primary screen, Pinterest will need to focus on making their mobile app just as vital to users as their website.

Verdict: Good!

What’s Next For Pinterest?

There it is. The good, the bad and the ugly. Recent reports value Pinterest around $10 billion dollars. A giant leap from the $5 billion reported last year. Hopefully Pinterest has a strong growth plan in place. What do you think of Pinterest? Please post a comment below.

Sources @globalwebindex, @WSJ, @pewresearch, @alexainternet, @venturebeat, @TheIACP, @mashable, @wikipedia