Pinterest vs. Reddit: Gender Plays A Role

Pinterest not only was the fastest growing social site in history, but it also is one of the few sites where a majority of the audience is female.

That fact has largely dictated the type of content that is shared, making it the ideal space for fashion, lifestyle, food, and home goods brands to reach their target audience.

While the male audience has been increasing in the past few months, some joke that women should be trying to keep Pinterest a sacred place. Check out this animated short by College Humor about The Fall of Pinterest.

Mashable calls it a tribute to “Everything you love and hate about web culture clashes in an epic animation that pits the women of Pinterest against the men of the Internet.”

There could be a valid reason why women might want to keep Pinterest for their own. Other sites, such as Reddit and Tumblr, whose brand identity depends on the content shared by their audiences, have a male dominant audience where anonymity allows for a rise in sometimes less than acceptable behavior.

PBS’s web series Off Book interviewed co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian to explain, in less than 10 minutes, the power and allure of Reddit. In the middle of the video, the founders discussed how misogynist comments appear on the news-aggregate site, ostracizing the small but present female audience.

With two of the main doctrines of content marketing strategy being “know the audience” and “allow for user generated content,” Reddit and Pinterest are two examples of communities where the audience runs the show and dictates what each platform stands for.