Pinterest is arguably the hottest social media site on the Internet—user traffic to the online social catalog has skyrocketed since mid-2011—but the website also boasts strong audience engagement, retention, and “virality” among its core demographic, according to a report by RJMetrics.

Based on data collected and analyzed by RJMetrics, key findings from the report include: 

• Pinterest is retaining and engaging its users 2 to 3 times more efficiently, on average, than Twitter was at a similar time in its life cycle.
• “Pins” link to a huge array of websites. For example, Etsy is the most popular source of pin content, but it accounts for only 3% of pins.
• 80% of pins are “re-pins,” attesting the viral nature of the Pinterest community. By contrast, at a similar point in Twitter’s life cycle, roughly 1.4% of all tweets were re-tweets, according to a study conducted by Hubspot in 2009.
• The “quality” of the typical new Pinterest user (where quality is defined by a user’s level of engagement and likelihood to remain active) is high, but declining. Users who have joined Pinterest in recent months are 2 to 3 times less active during their first month than users who joined before them.

Below, detailed findings from the RJMetrics report Pinterest Data Analysis: An Inside Look.

Pins Connect to a Vast Array of  Web Sources

On Pinterest, every pin (or linked image) ties back to an external link. Among a sample of roughly 1 million pins, more than 100,000 distinct source domains were found. 

 

Among those 100,000 domains, the following chart shows the top 20 sources. The most popular domain was Etsy, which powered just over 3% of pins. Google was a close second, though almost all Google links point to Google Image Search, which is technically misattributed content from other 3rd party domains, RJMetrics points out.  

 

Flickr (2.5%), Tumblr (1.1%), and weheartit (1.0%) round out the top 5, after which no domain represents more than 1% of pins.

The Viral Nature of Re-Pins

The analysis also broke out the population of pins by how those pins were posted to Pinterest.  

Remarkably, over 80% of pins are re-pins, demonstrating the impressive level of “virality” at work in the Pinterest community.

 

By contrast, a study conducted by Hubspot at a similar point in Twitter’s history found roughly 1.4% of tweets were retweets.

Surprisingly, a low proportion of pins originate from pinmarklet, a browser bookmarklet that allows users to pin content from any website via one click.  

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/7173/whats-driving-pinterests-amazing-growth#ixzz1nWWleNvG

More at: http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-governance/social-media-research/

More at: http://blogs.webtrends.com/2011/06/facebook-marketing-even-more-takeaway-tips/

Let’s consider the news media sector. From a pure quantitative standpoint, Facebook remains a solid referral for news sites as people “Like” and link to stories. But Facebook encourages fly-bys, ie viewers that won’t stay on the site. Twitter’s referrals to news content are of a different nature. Tweets and retweeets usually come from people who have chosen to follow a given individual, a news organisation or a specific subject. The referral is therefore much sharper, more targeted than the impulsive “throw-on-my-Facebook-wall” type.

For what it worth, let’s look at an essay published last Saturday in the Wall Street Journal. Titled Why Can’t Wall Street Handle the Truth, it is written by Mike Mayo, a long-time analyst who made repeated calls to dump bank stocks.

The essay generated 795 Facebook “likes” – which is small for a story that is freely available in the WSJ Social Facebook application:

In the meantime, the same piece (and the mention of Mayo’s book) has been indexed 140,000 times in Google, thanks to only 392 tweets.

Still using the Wall Street Journal as an example, let’s have look at Walt Mossberg’s presence (he is the Journal’s world-famous tech writer). On Facebook, his page has 874 “likes”. On the WSJ Social application, where Mossberg appears as an editor, he has 252 readers and the app has been able to collect a total “23K readers”

Not very compelling.

But, on Twitter, Mossberg has 264,000 followers.

Another key element in Twitter’s favour: the mobile factor. Twitter’s 140-character format turned out to be a killer on smartphones: according to recent ComScore study, about 13.5% of Twitter users are mobile ones, vs 7% for Facebook and 5% for LinkedIn. And the microblogging service is growing faster on mobile (+75% year on year) than LinkedIn (+69%) and Facebook (+50%). That’s the privilege of simplicity and straightforwardness over feature-itis.

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/07/twitter-facebook?

Social networking applications on mobile devices rate highly for reach, frequency and time spent, according to new research from Experian Simmons that used metering technology to track usage of U.S. smartphone owners between March and July this year.

In looking at mobile activity on a typical day, the study found voice callling applications (usually a native app on the phone) had the highest daily reach, at 62%, followed by messaging (51%), browser (47%), email (45%) and social networking apps (38%). Almost one-quarter (23%) of users opened an app store application at least once a day, suggesting a strong interest in finding new titles. When it comes to frequency, social networking comes out on top, with people checking social apps on average 17.7 times a day.

The high frequency is partly due to the nature of social networking, where people post short messages throughout the day, such as Twitter. For similar reasons, email apps are launched 13.6 times a day, followed by voice apps (10.3). Social networking apps also led the way in time spent per day at 33.6 minutes, followed by messaging (28.6), email (22.3), gaming/entertainment (21.3), and voice (20.3).

More at: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/160541/marketers-mobile-social-networking-scores-with-us.html?edition=39303

Techcrunch stated that in February 2011, just under 14% of access to their site was on a mobile device -  up 702% from February 2009. Add this to the fact that Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, recently said that 40% of all Tweets are now composed on mobile devices (up from around 20% in 2010) and we begin to get a pretty clear picture of the way mobile is impacting social media.

Indeed, more research has suggested that the number of people accessing social media services from their phones in the US alone will rise by 20% annually between now and 2015.

Burson-Marsteller 2011 Global Social Media Check-up View more presentations from Burson-Marsteller

• 38% of men, but just 29% of women own a smartphone.
• Facebook is used by 56% of people – 60% of women, but just 52% of men.
• 14% of men shop using apps, but only 8% of women do.
• 27% of male shoppers use price comparison sites, while only 19% of women do.

Retailers are proving to be the gateways for brands, with 75% of people visiting retail websites, but less than half that number – 33% – going to brand websites.

Meanwhile, 63% of shoppers will buy through either a retail or brand website. For social media campaigns, this figure falls to 6%.

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Using social media, the main reasons for connecting with brands was found to be:

• 32% – finding out something new
• 23% – for brands to connect with them
• 24% – to be sold something by brands
• 12% – for brands or retailers to help them have fun

More than half (54%) of people thought brands or retailers used social media to sell more products, while 43% thought it was “because everyone else is”.