Specialization, homophily, and gender in a social curation site: findings from pinterest

  • Authors:

  • Shuo Chang;Vikas Kumar;Eric Gilbert;Loren G. Terveen

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA;University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA;University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

Pinterest is a popular social curation site where people collect, organize, and share pictures of items. We studied a fundamental issue for such sites: what patterns of activity attract attention (audience and content reposting)-- We organized our studies around two key factors: the extent to which users specialize in particular topics, and homophily among users. We also considered the existence of differences between female and male users. We found: (a) women and men differed in the types of content they collected and the degree to which they specialized; male Pinterest users were not particularly interested in stereotypically male topics; (b) sharing diverse types of content increases your following, but only up to a certain point; (c) homophily drives repinning: people repin content from other users who share their interests; homophily also affects following, but to a lesser extent. Our findings suggest strategies both for users (e.g., strategies to attract an audience) and maintainers (e.g., content recommendation methods) of social curation sites.