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They suggest ways of using the site, appealing to different types of
users. The current Pinterest audience is overwhelmingly female. 85% of
page views in January 2012 came from women (Delo). The pinboards here
echo this report, primarily featuring recipes, home decorating, and
weddings (topics that are, at least in our culture, more of a focus for
women than men). While the pinboard "Save your Inspirations!" does not
indicate any gender bias, the board focusing on style features only
men's clothing. Because style is another topic that is usually
associated with women in our culture, this choice could be seen as
an attempt to pull in more male viewers, despite the fact that there
are quite a few other categories on the site that are mostly used by men.
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The categories on Pinterest range from holidays and home decor
to sports and outdoors, so there is a huge variety in types of users.
And because the site is simple and easily manipulated, each person
can use the site in whatever way they choose so it is almost
impossible to imagine the variety of uses for Pinterest. In their
article "Making projects, making friends: Online community as a
catalyst for interactive media creation", Karen Brennan, Andres
Monroy-Hernandez, and Michel Resnick create a spectrum for users
of a site called Scratch that ranges from socializing users to
creating users. This spectrum could easily be applied to users of
Pinterest. The users that pin more cute animals and humorous images
fall into the socializing category while the users that focus on design
and typography are often the more creating users.
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