Sunday, September 2, 2012

Pinterest's Hype Bubble Is Deflated

Charlie Warzel reports in Buzzfeed (Reddit generates huge referral traffic while Pinterest falls flat.) some facts that match what many have observed in their web logs: the hype about how links to your website on Pinterest will result in a welcome deluge of traffic is, well, just hype.
At Pinterest's peak in April 2012, the photo-centric social site was churning out nearly 400,000 social referrals. In July, Pinterest served up only 114,000 referrals (virtually unchanged from 110,000 in June), illustrating that for many publishers, Pinterest may be more of a social gimmick than anything else.
Compared to the 3.1 million referrals Reddit.com brought in July, Pinterest's peak of 114,000 referrals is positively anemic, and barely registering. This is hardly surprising since the audience for mindless columns of image thumbnails are hardly expected to want to dwell deeper, especially into daunting walls of text.

According to Josh Sternberg in Is Pinterest of Interest to Publishers, online magazine publishers report that in terms of traffic referrals, Pinterest is a dud. The print/online magazine The Atlantic doesn’t see much traffic coming from Pinterest. “Pinterest is not an effective referral tool for us,” said the magazine's Scott Havens. Pinterest isn't even in the top 50 of its referrers.

Right now, the internet is teeming with articles praising Pinterest's referral traffic potential, preaching that every business should consecrate much precious time posting images, cultivating followers, interacting with pinners, following them, etc., not to miss out on Pinterest's much touted referral traffic miracle.

Like untruths sparked by wishful thinking and set afire by self-styled Pinterest gurus striving to sell e-books and a name for themselves, this one will soon be a handful of ashes in the wind.

2 comments:

Libby said...

Pinhags are more interested in Taking, not Referring

A Glass Artist said...

Yes, and for the longest time there was:

What-I-observe vs. Pinterest-Hype

...and there was an abyss between the two. I'm glad that some credible organizations are willing to put their data out there; Pinterest referral traffic isn't all it's hyped up to be, quite the contrary. Content creators get almost nothing back from Pinterest in return for compromising their copyright.