Pinterest, Instagram continue meteoric growth
Pinterest and Instagram, two social networks that gained mainstream popularity in just the last year, are continuing to grow at exponential rates, a new study shows.
Weekly visits to Pinterest’s website from North American users hit nearly 29 million in July, up from 1.27 million a year earlier, according to Experian Marketing Services. That’s an increase of 2,183% for the social network, which has been especially popular among women.
Pinterest, which lets users collect and post images the way people do with pinboards in real life, began to see its popularity pick up dramatically early this year. That culminated in a $100-million round of funding in May that valued the start-up at more than $1.5 billion.
The study found Pinterest was the third most visited social-networking site in July, trailing only Facebookand Twitter.
Instagram also saw a hefty pickup in its website traffic during the same time. The photo-sharing mobile social network saw its weekly visits go from 56,360 last year to more than 12 million last month.
The vast majority of activity on Instagram is through its mobile app, but Bill Tancer, Experian Marketing Service’s head of global research, said he believes Instagram’s website traffic growth mimics increases in its app usage.
In April, Instagram struck a deal to be acquired by Facebook Inc. in a deal that was worth $1 billion at the time. Since then, the value of the deal, which has yet to close, has fallen to about $747 million because of declines in Facebook’s share price.
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