Marie C. Cassandra

Previously, I explored two potential Monetization Strategies for Pinterest:

Strategy 1: Monetizing Leads to Retailers
Strategy 2: Promoted Pins

Pinterest’s opportunities for generating revenue continue to increase along with their meteoric growth, but the company faces a large obstacle ahead: Men. The vast majority of their current user base is women which limits their growth rate to only 50% of the population. As of now, the site is a great place for discovering craft tutorials, recipes, fashion finds, beauty tips, etc. Not exactly the kind of content/community that is attractive and welcoming to a male visitor. I’ve personally observed a guy visiting the site and being like “Whoa, this is for chicks” and then quickly fleeing. To this end, there are at least 4 bro-friendly Pinterest style sites that have launched. These competitors create Challenge #1.

If Pinterest does find a way to lure male visitors away from these competitors, they will then face Challenge #2: not alienating their current core audience of women. College Humor has a great parody video called “The Fall of Pinterest” which captures this serious concern. Will all this new dude content affect the overall experience?

Men: How could Pinterest be more appealing to you?
Women: If you use Pinterest, are you concerned by the addition of male users to the community?