Dude, What Are You Doing On Pinterest?

Over the course of the semester and in our final group project, I explored the notion of social media across multiple channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterst, Tublr, just to name a few. In both class discussions and in my group project team meetings, it was impossible to not laugh at notion of men on Pinterst and the inevitable   joke about an Alpha male using his Pinterst page to share a baking recipe or his favorite outfit. However, in a recently published article by Pinerest, in an effort to celebrate their 5 year anniversary, they published their growth stats, with particular attention on the numbers of male users on their website.

According to the article, the growth of their male users is significant.

"We doubled our male user base in the U.S. this year," Pinterest says. "Last year our male user base in the U.S. grew 73% year over year, and has been picking up in the past 6 months (54%) vs. the prior 6 months (40%), which is outpacing overall Pinterest growth."

The rest of the article goes into detail around the most popular uses of male Pinterst pages, such as:

1. Reading Lists
2. Fishing Spots
3. Ideas for Man Caves
4. Travel
5. Tattoos
6. Comics

As advertisers and marketers try to target males, it is important for them to recognize their increased interest in Pinterest and leverage this to their advantage. As Pinerest tries to sync products to seamless purchases, it is important to move past the stereotype Pinerest user to really look at the numbers and recognize that this is a valuable channel to explore to target the male demographic.