Pinterest Case Study: Mobile App Success, Architecture & User Impact

This case study explores Pinterest, a visually-driven social network, focusing on its mobile application implementation and business impact. It examines Pinterest's architectural features, including pins, pinboards, and data collection methods. The study discusses the company's growth, user engagement, and competitive landscape, highlighting its popularity, particularly among female users, and its presence in various regions globally. Key risks and problems, such as competition, controversial content, and security concerns, are also addressed. The case study concludes by summarizing Pinterest's success as a platform for sharing visual content and its ongoing challenges in maintaining a safe and engaging user experience. Desklib provides access to a wealth of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in their academic endeavors.

Running head: PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Architectural features:.....................................................................................................................2
Impact on the user and company:....................................................................................................3
Popularity areas:..............................................................................................................................6
Key Risks:........................................................................................................................................6
Problems:.........................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:......................................................................................................................................9

2PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Introduction:
Pinterest was first introduced as an image based social web site in the year 2010. After
nine months of launched they had almost 10,000 user and an iPhone application was launched to
attract more users in March 2011. Later Pinterest was also launched for non-iPhone users. The
application was updated numerous time to enable additional features such as report for offensive
content. The have raised almost 1.4 billion dollar in whole evenhandedness investment
meanwhile its commencement (Zhong et al. 2014). It was the fastest social media to gain a hefty
amount of 10 million monthly active user milestone. Pinterest offer vast amount of content
known as pings which are nothing but an image. Mostly, this images contains memes, quotes,
and covers of game, music, anime and movies. Users are capable of both upload and view the
contents and categorize their home page with certain categories such as cars, relationship,
models and many more.
Architectural features:
Simply, Pinterest is platform that is dependent on the functioning of the users and the
images are placed on a pin board. This concept makes it a suitable place for promoting
commercial activities. Like other social networks, they use terminologies that are specific in
nature in order to procure different services and methodologies.
Pins: pins are the most important elements of the application. It can be considered as a basic
build of the Pinterest. The pins are posted by users and the process is called pinning. The user
who post the pins known as pinner (Simpson and Mazzeo 2017). Like other social networks,
users can share the pin whenever they want to and they can share their details with any one they
want to. Every pin also contains several metadata as source, content in commend, number of
wants and the number of pin number that are unique in nature with a better terminology of data
proclamation.
Pinboards: It is also a one of the most common terms of Pinterest. Pinboards are themed
collection of pins. Each board referred with a unique category as food, drink, animals, education
and many more. The pinboards replicates the initial concept that is generated by the data
processing of the terminology of the management that is related to the proper defragmentation of
the scrapbook images.

3PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Data collection: Pinterest stores their user details in a discriminate database. User Display name
is one of the main concern of the projection of the process along with the data regarding the
description of the profile picture that is present and the twitter handle will also be taken into
consideration and this is the main reason that the data management that is performed with the
technology that is performed with the help of data prosecution will be performed with the help of
this system.
Figure 1: Data Flow Diagram
Source: (Sago 2013)
A research paper showcase the data analysis report of 3,323,054 operator contours. They
removed 777,748 boards and their corresponding details. These facts embrace board category,
the exact number of the people that are being followed and this also improves the number of pins
that are included in the commencing of the pinboard.
Impact on the user and company:
Pinterest was launched in March 2010 by the CEO of the company Ben Silbermann. It
gained a huge amount of popularity with in a year. According to the CEO of the Pinterest, their
main mission is to assist users discover the contents they love and inspired them throughout their
daily life. The chief perception of the project is to perform the collection, share visual contents

4PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
and organize (Forte, Hall and Zarro 2013). Pinterest propelled in March 2010 and was between
the debauched communal broadcasting systems to grasp the 10 million MAU breakthrough. In
the last five years, Pinterest has sustained to enhance novel operators and upsurge appointment
heights, as demonstrated in the chart below.
Figure 2: Monthly active user
Source: (Phillips, Miller and McQuarrie 2014)
The organizations gain a huge amount of capita from mobile advertising. IDC estimated
advertising spend around 170 to 180 billion per year (Lewallen and Behm-Morawitz 2016). The
mobile advertising trend is also growing rapidly due to the over popularity of the phones and
internet connections. Pinterset aslo gains benefits for the growth of the probable growing in
cybernetic authenticity bionetworks and amplified authenticity in mobile media. There are
several commercial application such as google+ who provide similar services as Pinterest.
However, Pinterest is way popular than other applications. Hubspot’s marketing analysis report
presents a comparison report of Google+ and pinterest. According to the analysis, Pinterest
presents a serious issues to other social media channels and have a competitive advantage to
businesses that have started leveraging its potential.

5PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Figure 3: comparison between Google+ and Pinterest.
Source: (Ottoni et al. 2013)
Users are frequently stay active as Pinterest has more monthly active user than linked in
and twitter. Vast amount of visual contents are attracting many users and content creators. The
interaction between users and creators are the main reason behind the report. Pinterest also gains
more marketing growth then the linkedin and twitter. Pinterest probable must have an additional
betrothed spectators than Snapchat, which was a astonishing report (Forte, Hall and Zarro 2013).
Figure 4: Estimated MAU’s

6PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Source: (Guidry et al. 2015)
Popularity areas:
From a popularity distribution analysis, Pinterest popularity areas are identified across the
world. It has been found that majority users are located in USA, Brazil, UK, Europe and India.
Minimal amount of user located in china, Russia and Africa. Pinterest is also falls under the top
most popular social network in the USA, Canada, Brazil, UK, Europe and India. It is also found
that majority of the user were females. According to the report, 88% of the user in the USA are
females. Similar trends are identified in the Canada, Brazil, UK, Europe and India. India is lone
republic in the best ten, where the male (46.64%) operators are more than the female users
(45.30%) (Forte, Hall and Zarro 2013).
Figure 5: Top 10 countries
Source: (Gilbert et al. 2013)
Key Risks:
There are several social network site which are heavily populated across the world.
Pinterest compete with diversity of additional communal stages, connected promotion
organizations and e-c ommerce market places. Facebook and Google are the biggest player in the
market as online advertising industry. The success rate of such applications mainly depends on
the ability to provide customer experience (Hambrick and Kang 2017). The customer

7PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
engagement also depends on some certain factors such as user engagement, product innovation
track record, long-term value proposition to advertisers and network size.
Competition:
Off -Line
Players
Better possible for Pinterest to spouse to provide assistance “close the loop”
Little danger of simple rivalry ended the lengthier duration
Fairly wide range of incumbents and potential competition
Interest-Sharing
Companies
Such players more entrenched with local regulations and authorities
Vertically or regionally focused companies can become acquisition
candidates
Websites such as Craigslist still gather noteworthy shopper consideration •
Sheer or provincially attentive businesses can convert attainment
Large Tech
Platforms
Movable stages with gluey operator centers can modify customer
conduct/prospects.
Big internet stages have important tech knowledge.
Important companies to display contain Apple and Google.
E-Commerce
Aggregators
Aptitude to alteration part finances from a customer’s position.
Such trades contend for buyer share-of-mind as healthy as share-of-wallet.
Though, possible for Pinterest to also companion through stores.
Amazon and eBay are most direct competitors.
Online
Advertising
Gage is a important foundation of inexpensive gain (moat) in online bazaar
places
Ruler is a main foundation of inexpensive plus (moat) in operational
marketplaces
Lots of old-style on ad businesses such as Yahoo!
Social Media
Platforms
Social Media Platforms.
Several international/regional players as well.
Direct competitors: Facebook, Twitter, and Snap chat.

8PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
Problems:
Pinterest, a billion dollar communal system, has been overwhelming considered by online
reporters as a women-centered community broadcasting. According to Johanna Blakely,
Communal media offsets masculinity once it originates to advertising demographics. Some users
promote controversial and body/beauty ideals through pinning and re-pinning images. On the
other hand, users post explicit images. This type of social issues are effecting the company. A
training investigated the foundation URLs of a haphazard example of 5.5 million pins and found
1,322 (0.024%) exceptional malware pins (Chang et al. 2014). With respect to many report,
processing of the spam and malware system, low amount proposes that the methods organized by
Pinterest to prevent malware are certainly actual. Security and privacy is also major problem for
Pinterest. A survey found that more than 40% user keeps their email address open to everyone.
Crucial information could be compromised sue to such factors.
Conclusion:
Pinterest is a visual based billion dollar social network and highly popular among
females. Pinterest offer vast amount of content known as pings which are nothing but an image.
Mostly, this images contains memes, quotes, and covers of game, music, anime and movies.
Users are capable of both upload and view the contents and categorize their home page with
certain categories such as cars, relationship, models and many more. Some social network trends
are also started at Pinterest. There are several social network site which are heavily populated
across the world. Pinterest compete with diversity of extra communal podiums, online
advertising organizations and e-commerce market places. It has wide popularity in various
region across the globe.

9PINTEREST: LIFE STYLE IDEAS
References:
Chang, S., Kumar, V., Gilbert, E. and Terveen, L.G., 2014, February. Specialization, homophily,
and gender in a social curation site: findings from pinterest. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM
conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 674-686). ACM.
Forte, M.Z.C.H.A., Hall, C. and Zarro, M., 2013. Wedding dresses and wanted criminals:
Pinterest. com as an infrastructure for repository building. In Proceedings of the Seventh
International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 650-658).
Gilbert, E., Bakhshi, S., Chang, S. and Terveen, L., 2013, April. I need to try this?: a statistical
overview of pinterest. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing
systems (pp. 2427-2436). ACM.
Guidry, J.P., Carlyle, K., Messner, M. and Jin, Y., 2015. On pins and needles: how vaccines are
portrayed on Pinterest. Vaccine, 33(39), pp.5051-5056.
Hambrick, M.E. and Kang, S.J., 2015. Pin it: Exploring how professional sports organizations
use Pinterest as a communications and relationship-marketing tool. Communication &
Sport, 3(4), pp.434-457.
Lewallen, J. and Behm-Morawitz, E., 2016. Pinterest or thinterest?: Social comparison and body
image on social media. Social Media+ Society, 2(1), p.2056305116640559.
Mull, I.R. and Lee, S.E., 2014. “PIN” pointing the motivational dimensions behind
Pinterest. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, pp.192-200.
Ottoni, R., Pesce, J.P., Las Casas, D.B., Franciscani Jr, G., Meira Jr, W., Kumaraguru, P. and
Almeida, V.A., 2013, July. Ladies First: Analyzing Gender Roles and Behaviors in Pinterest.
In ICWSM.
Phillips, B.J., Miller, J. and McQuarrie, E.F., 2014. Dreaming out loud on Pinterest: New forms
of indirect persuasion. International Journal of Advertising, 33(4), pp.633-655.

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Sago, B., 2013. Factors influencing social media adoption and frequency of use: An examination
of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. International Journal of Business and
Commerce, 3(1), pp.1-14.
Simpson, C.C. and Mazzeo, S.E., 2017. Skinny is not enough: A content analysis of fitspiration
on Pinterest. Health communication, 32(5), pp.560-567.
Zhong, C., Salehi, M., Shah, S., Cobzarenco, M., Sastry, N. and Cha, M., 2014, April. Social
bootstrapping: how pinterest and last. fm social communities benefit by borrowing links from
facebook. In Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web (pp. 305-314).
ACM.