How one man learned to stop worrying and love the Pin
A single, straight man walks into a bar filled with enthusiastic, social females and he…walks out. This is no joke. This is the way many men, who otherwise use a multitude of social media networks, feel about Pinterest. Currently, women make up about 82% of active users on the site.
I requested, and was granted, a Printerest account a month or so ago. At first, I too was skeptical. I mean, what was with all the hype? And what was with all the recipes? It seemed like a direct feed from Martha Stewart’s brain. That said, there was no denying the slickness of the interface. It’s the nut that the developers at Printerest ultimately cracked: the interface design and user experience (on any device) is strikingly elegant and just plain fun. (Both designers and engineers use that term, “elegant,” and it applies here in every way possible.)
For me, however, the surprise of Pinterest is not so much that women are there in droves, it’s that men are not.
In an era when the male of the species seems inordinately confused by the state of the female—questioning her wants and needs, her dreams and idiosyncrasies—the answers are in the daily “pins” and “re-pins” of more than a million women worldwide. I realized this fact when my own pins were “repinned” by other users. These were not “friends” I had connected (a la Facebook) with or “colleagues” I had known (per LinkedIn). These were people who didn’t know me or anything about me. They simply saw the image on one of my Pinterest “boards” and wanted to make it part of their own. That was flattering, in and of itself.
What really woke me were the names of the repinners: “Marilyn Caruthers repinned your pin on Pinterest,” read the email subject line. Another one, moments later, read: “Allison Mays + 5 others repinned your pin…” The names of repinners that followed, and has continued following, reads like the graduating class of Smith College: “Mary Bianchi, Danielle Grieves, Olivia England, Deborah Wagner, Sharon Hutson, Diane Riley, Mary Scott, Alieen Quach, Allison Murphy, Jennifer Brown, Kristina Zwan, Nicole Kalisker, Meghan Blahham, Debra Morin,” and on and on!
Gentlemen, this is where the ladies are. Where are you? Afraid that you’ll have to wade through pages of Paris couture when all you really want to do is save your favorite photo of Larry Bird from ESPN.com? Fact is, like any social tool, Pinterest is what you make it. Want to limit your experience to guns and sports? Lock and load. Want to just pin images of cars you’ve owned (or want to own), single malt scotches you’ve sipped, or (like me) golf courses you’ve played? You are what you pin.
But, aside from the obvious (and undeniable) joy of pinning images you love, the surprise of Pinterest is seeing what other people love…and the huge range of interests in this rapidly growing universe. The fact that so many of them are women only adds to its attraction for men who simply want to know what the other half is thinking. It may not always be so but, today, it’s a vivid education.
