What makes Pintrest so addictive?

Ever since I’ve begun to use Pintrest or rather even heard about it, I’ve been wondering what the big deal is about this? What’s the big fuss about pinning and re-pinning images of others?

Column Five has created this infographic to examine this Pintrest addiction which seems to have spread like a live-threatening virus.

Beyond this, the company also examines why the Internet culture is so obsessed with pinning. It posits that digital hoarding has a lot to do with it. On Pinterest, we have freedom to create an entire board dedicated to “food” or any other topic that you might favor.

Then there’s the issue of social media fatigue. Is Pinterest just different enough from other social networks that it frees us from ceaseless updates and checkins? Or has it just replaced one obsession with another — a sort of social media gateway drug?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PinkTag, Infographic courtesy of Flowtown, via Column Five 

What Twitter Users Think About the Brands They Follow?

Followers are a loyal base of current customers. E-Marketer estimates there will be closeto 21 million Twitter users in the US by the end of the current year, and of that a sizeable minority of those will use the service at least in parts to follow brands.

Research on Twitter users by Constant Contact andChadwick Martin Bailey put the share following brands at 21% of the total. That comes closely in line with April 2011 research from Compete, which found out 19% of Twitter users found brands to follow on the service.In the Constant Contact/CMB study, most brand followers kept following with just a few favorite companies on Twitter. Their main reason for becoming a brand follower, cited by 64% who did so, was that they were already a customer of the company—far ahead of the 48% who did so just o avail discounts and deals from the particular brand.

While Twitter followers may already be hardcore customers, that doesn’t mean the following has no effect on them. Overall, 50% stated that after following a company’s tweets they were more likely to purchase from the firm, and among men the share was 55%. An even stronger bunch f people said they would be more likely to recommend the brand to other people, at least in the case of a few companies they followed already. If the brands what them to do so, they will have to provide their followers with what they want. Besides from promotions and discounts; information— 61% follow brands so they can be the “first to know” what’s hot and new; exclusive content (36%), along with the content, they can share with others and pass along via retweets (28%).