Pinning Alone? A Study of the Role of Social Ties on Pinterest

Authors

  • Changtao Zhong King's College London
  • Nicolas Kourtellis Telefonica I+D
  • Nishanth Sastry King's College London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v10i1.14820

Abstract

This paper seeks to answer the question of whether social ties are important on interest-driven social networks, by analysing 4-years of activities of 50,000 randomly sampled users on Pinterest, a social image discovery website. We find that a non-trivial number of users’ images are copied or repinned from strangers instead of friends, suggesting that social-based information exploration is not important. However, social interactions and social repins are critical for user retention: users interacting with friends are more likely to return Pinterest soon. These results suggest that the real role of social ties on interest-driven social networks is to enable bonding of users rather than seeking information.

Downloads

Published

2021-08-04

How to Cite

Zhong, C., Kourtellis, N., & Sastry, N. (2021). Pinning Alone? A Study of the Role of Social Ties on Pinterest. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 10(1), 751-754. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v10i1.14820