For over a decade, Pinterest has been the go-to platform for millions seeking ideas and inspiration for almost anything under the sun. Be it home décor, recipes, wedding decoration, festival decoration, or DIY projects, and much more. It is almost like a universe where ideas and inspiration run amok.
This brings us to the interesting question: Is Pinterest a social media platform? Where does it exactly stand when compared with other popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X?
As much as we’d like to give a polarizing answer, we’d resist this temptation. That’s because this complex question warrants a far more nuanced answer.
On this note, let’s deep dive and find out a conclusive answer to this question.
What makes Pinterest a social media platform?
Pinterest has many standard and typical features that are found in almost all social media platforms. These features are as follows:
Creating profile:
Like all other social media platforms, Pinterest users have to create their own profiles. By default, your profile becomes your main board, where you can save or upload your images and photos that primarily express your ideas and interests.
Following:
Again, like other counterparts, Pinterest also allows its users to follow other people’s boards or profiles. This enables fostering a sense of community, allowing users to follow boards that align with their interests and hobbies.
Sharing:
Sharing, one of the trademark features of the social media world, is very much present in Pinterest. Users can easily share their pinned images or any image they like with their followers or anyone having their profile on Pinterest.
Simply click on the share icon and search for people or whom you want to share by name or email id.
Additionally, Pinterest is also well integrated with other popular social media platforms, allowing users to share their favorite images with their friends on Facebook, X, and WhatsApp.
Messaging:
Pinterest also allows users to send direct messages, though this is not the primary function of the platform. It is more of a secondary feature. Nonetheless, it allows users to share text messages and even pins with people having common interests.
Furthermore, the platform also allows group conversations, allowing up to 10 users to engage in a conversation simultaneously.
What makes Pinterest more than just a social media platform?
In order to give a more nuanced and refined answer to our fundamental question, ‘Is Pinterest a social media?’ We’ll now focus on the other side of the argument.
We’ll explore why, despite having several quintessential features, Pinterest is more than just a typical social media platform.
Focuses primarily on discovery and not connection:
One of the biggest differentiating factors and also USPs is that Pinterest primarily focuses on discovery, allowing users to discover exciting ideas and inspirations across categories and a wide-range of interests. They in turn use these ideas for fulfilling or bettering their tasks, like home decoration, social media posts, fashion tips so, and so forth.
In other words, Pinterest is not a place where you connect with your families and friends. It is only and only about offering ideas and inspirations that help in bettering your life. Therefore, outrightly comparing with other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is completely wrong.
Acts like a search engine:
Nope, Pinterest does not compete with Google. It is not a conventional search engine in that sense. However, it is certainly a visual search engine, allowing users to actively search visuals or images related to specific topics or interests. This in turn leads them to relevant pins and boards.
This search-driven nature gives this platform a unique identity, setting it apart from other popular social media platforms.
Now try recollecting, when was the last time you went to Facebook and Instagram only for searching content and ideas aligning with your interests and hobbies. Probably never, or there might be a few exceptional instances.
Focus is on content:
While other platforms like Instagram lays huge emphasis on content creators, Pinterest does not. It primarily focuses only on content and not the content creator. Therefore, personal branding never takes precedence in the world of Pinterest.
This sharp focus on content again amplifies its role as a search engine where personal identity and reputation have a lesser role to play.
Curated collections:
Another interesting factor is the focus on curated collections rather than on social interactions. By curated collections, we are basically talking about boards, which is the heart and soul of Pinterest.
Boards allow users to organize and curate their visual content into theme-based collection. For instance, users can upload and save fashion related content on board dedicated to fashion whereas content related to digital marketing will be saved in a board dedicated to digital marketing.
This feature of theme-based collection is not available on any other social media platform.
Final Thought:
So, is Pinterest a social media? As we had said in the beginning, there cannot be black-and-white approach to this complex question. Pinterest surely occupies a unique space not only in social media but also in the online world.
It has a little bit of all elements. It has the elements of social media coupled with a strong search engine feature while also acting as a bookmarking tool. There are probably not many platforms that imbibe all these diverse features seamlessly under one roof. In that sense, Pinterest is an exception and one of its kind platforms.
To settle this debate conclusively, we can say that Pinterest is a visual and content discovery platform with social media features.
Content and visual discovery is and will always be its primary feature, while social media features act and will always act as a facilitator.
