Facebook, Google benefit most from Pinterest shares

We know Pinterest is great for driving traffic to sites, but who’s actually benefitting the most from the up-and-comer’s surge in popularity? Logically, it should be sites that share some of the visual appeal of Pinterest, or those selling the kind of objects people like to pin — lifestyle brands in particular should be doing well.

A couple are, but according to new data from Experian Hitwise, the company benefitting the most from Pinterest is actually Facebook.

That’s a little surprising given that it isn’t among the top sources of content on the visual social network (despite Facebook wanting to associate Pinterest’s Timeline app with its meteoric growth).

If you’re wondering why YouTube is the only video-sharing site on the list, it’s probably down to the fact it’s also the only on that lets you embed videos directly onto your pin board.

One thing we could possibly gauge from its presence on the list, however, is that the content being shared by people from Facebook draws people into clicking on it. The same thing goes for Google.

It also might explain why there’s such a large disparity between the two social giants and online marketplace Etsy.

Just because Etsy and Pinterest might seem like a match made in heaven doesn’t mean people will automatically click through from on to the other. Think of Pinterest as the large sheet of glass that allows you to window shop without actually entering Etsy.

Another thing we can gauge from the list is that Pinterest users love emailing their pins. Gmail, Yahoo! mail and Windows Live mail are all on the list. If anything, this suggests Pinterest users are careful about considering who they share pins with — an email takes a little more time and is a lot more deliberate than a share.

We can also make some generalisations about who’s really benefitting from Pinterest: search engines (more than likely due to their image search functions), social networks, and ecommerce sites.

For the most part, the list seems about right, given the kind of social network Pinterest is. It will, however, be interesting to see if any individual media organisations manage to crack this list in the future.