Pinterest Searches For More Male Users

In an effort keep its male users active and attract more men, Pin­ter­est has updat­ed its search engine to show results just for guys.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Most of Pin­ter­est’s user base is female. But the image book­mark­ing site says more men are using Pin­ter­est. In an effort keep its male users active and attract even more men to the site, Pin­ter­est has updat­ed its search engine to show results just for men.


Pin­ter­est con­tin­ued to grow in 2014. It now has 72.5 mil­lion active users, up from 48 mil­lion in 2013, accord­ing to com­Score fig­ures. Although it is still most­ly female (71 per­cent), Pin­ter­est revealed that in 2014:

  • The total num­ber of male Pin­ter­est users dou­bled.
  • The total num­ber of U.S. male Pin­ter­est users grew by 73 per­cent.
  • A third of new Pin­ter­est signups were men.

Where do these new users live? Pin­ter­est revealed the five states where it is see­ing the most growth among men are Hawaii, New Jer­sey, Mary­land, New York, and Rhode Island.

Mean­while, Pew report­ed this month that 42 per­cent of online women use Pin­ter­est, com­pared to 13 per­cent of men in the U.S. Peo­ple between the age of 18 and 29 make up the largest por­tion of the plat­for­m’s user base, though Pew report­ed the site is see­ing sig­nif­i­cant gains among peo­ple over the age of 50.

Pin­ter­est has been a great plat­form for brands to reach younger women. Men, not so much. But own­ing the female demo­graph­ic appar­ent­ly isn’t enough for Pin­ter­est, which hopes to become “gen­der neu­tral.”

Pin­ter­est is not a tra­di­tion­al user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent plat­form, it’s a place where peo­ple are com­ing to dis­cov­er new busi­ness­es, new brands and new prod­ucts,” said Don Faul, Pin­ter­est’s head of oper­a­tions, at AdExchanger’s Indus­try Pre­view. “Our users are express­ing their future intent. It’s not the shoes they bought last week, or where they went on vaca­tion six months ago.”

Customized Search Results, Just For Men

Men who search Pin­ter­est, say for watch­es, shoes, or health, will now see results geared toward them, rather than see­ing results that did­n’t take gen­der into con­sid­er­a­tion. These search results are based on the activ­i­ty of oth­er male Pin­ter­est users. Here’s an exam­ple of results for watch­es when a man search­es (on the left) vs. a search by a woman:

Pinterest Search For Watches Men vs Women

As Pin­ter­est told WSJ:

…depend­ing on whether a male or female is brows­ing, a search for ‘work­outs’ gen­er­ates fit­ness tips that are as dif­fer­ent as the pages of Men’s Fit­ness and Women’s Health. In the past, the results for male users would have includ­ed a mix of men’s and women’s work­out reg­i­mens.”

But men won’t just be lim­it­ed to see­ing results only for men. If men are search­ing for gift ideas for women, they can change the search option, just as women could choose to search the men’s results.

What’s Popular On Pinterest Among Men

What’s trend­ing in term of Pins among men in the past year, accord­ing to Pin­ter­est?

  • Geek: Up 175 per­cent
  • Cars and motor­cy­cles: Up 134 per­cent
  • Men’s fash­ion: Up 122 per­cent
  • Archi­tec­ture: Up 119 per­cent
  • Gar­den­ing: Up 91 per­cent
  • Humor: Up 88 per­cent
  • Health and fit­ness: Up 84 per­cent

The top inter­ests for male Pin­ter­est users are men’s appar­el, tech­nol­o­gy, trav­el, gar­den­ing, recipes, gad­gets, design, lux­u­ry cars, tat­toos, and camp­ing.

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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