Instagram vs. Pinterest: Who's Hit the Sweet Spot?

(Image Source: Braid Creative & Consulting)

Instagram and Pinterest are two representatives of the fast growing social media. Instagram was bought by Facebook for a premium of $1 billion and Pinterest is backed up by many investors and entrepreneurs for its business potentials. Both are seeing sharp user increase over the past few years and millions of users are active on the social networks daily. They are also both deemed valuable as retailer brands can take good opportunities to connect to its customers and promotion of their products and services could be much more effective than traditional channels of advertising and marketing. 

So, two comparable brands in the social media space, who is going to outshine the other in the long run?

My answer is: Instagram.

First, both social media encourage business to promote through their network but Instagram has its advantage on retaining the individual users. Through 'repins' and 'likes', information is disseminated at a lightning speed. And that's what advertisers love to see. More importantly, those users who click repin or like, are those potential customers who are likely to buy the products. That's how the consumers are better targeted. However, users are not only on social media just for the sake of sharing others' information, they would like to share their own one, too. On Instagram, users could easily upload photos taken by themselves to share their lifestyle or views. Though Pinterest users could do the same but that is often not the emphasis of this network. Put it simple, it is more about 'retweeting'. As such, a well blended information sharing, like in Instagram, makes the community more organic. 

Second, Instagram community is definitely more innovative considering it has a collection of aesthetic photo filters to use and 'make the photo look good' is always the aim of many users. Compared to that, Pinterest is only about channeling the information. There is no user-added value created in this process. In long term, Instagram is likely to prosper with fresh content while Pinterest may suffer if those creative minds have lost their interest and left those laymen with nothing to repin.

Last, backed up by Mark Zuckerberg, chances are that Instagram will have a deeper integration with Facebook, for whatever that could be. Undoubtedly, it will strengthen Instagram's position and provide it a more viable and stable business model in future. On the other hand, whether the growing trend of retail advertising could last long is still very uncertain in the long run, which puts Pinterest's future profitability in question. 

Different people could take a different view point over the two social media, what's your opinion on this? Feel free to leave your comment below and I'd love to hear that!

Technorati Tags: Commentary, Instagram, Pinterest, Social Media