PINS, PORTALS AND PURCHASES: EXAMINING THE POTENTIAL FOR CREDIBILITY CARRYOVER EFFECTS ON PINTEREST by OLGA KHARITONOVA B.S.J., Ohio University, 2011 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado at Boulder in partial fulfillment Of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 2013 This thesis entitled: Pins, Portals and Purchases: Examining the Potential for Credibility Carryover Effects on Pinterest written by Olga Kharitonova has been approved for the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication ______________________________ Michael Tracey, Ph.D. ______________________________ Rick Stevens, Ph.D. ______________________________ Tomasz Miaskiewicz, Ph.D. Date ___________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Kharitonova, Olga S. (M.A. Journalism, Journalism and Mass Communication) Pins, Portals and Purchases: Examining the Potential for Credibility Carryover Effects on Pinterest Thesis directed by Professor Michael Tracey In 2012, America’s third-largest social network was still entirely a startup. As one of the fastest-growing major websites in history, Pinterest.com has quickly established itself among the ranks of Facebook, Twitter and other social media behemoths. Pinterest’s placement alongside increasingly visual web design and increasing e-commerce activity supports the possibility that emotion-laden visual stimuli may be one of the driving forces behind e-commerce through channels of visual persuasion, as proposed by Barry’s Perception Theory. Research regarding the highly visual nature of credibility judgments supports this, showing that credibility assessments influence e-commerce spending. Through its extraordinary success, Pinterest posits itself as more than a case of a startup with good taste and good timing. Rather, it serves as a case study for why visual literacy (or visual intelligence) is becoming more important than ever in light of the increasingly visual (and emotionally influential) web. iv CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................1 Research Problem ...............................................................................9 Research Questions...........................................................................10 Methodology.....................................................................................10 II. PINTEREST BACKGROUND ..............................................................12 E-commerce Statistics.......................................................................14 User Demographics, Adoption Trends and Engagement..................15 Content..............................................................................................17 New Pinterest Features .....................................................................18 Awards ..............................................................................................19 How Pinterest Works ........................................................................20 III. PINTEREST METAPHORS ..................................................................29 User Interfaces Metaphors and Models ............................................30 Pinboard Metaphor ...........................................................................34 Early Bulletin Board Systems.....................................................35 Pregnancy Bulletin Boards .........................................................37 Pinterest as a Bulletin Board.......................................................40 Scrapbook Metaphor.........................................................................43 Scrapbooks as Tools for Nostalgia .............................................45 Scrapbooks as Consumer Tools and Status Makers ...................47 Scrapbooks as Professional Tools...............................................51 v Scrapbooking and Curation ........................................................53 Scrapbooks as Websites..............................................................56 Pinterest as a Scrapbook .............................................................59 Portal Metaphor ................................................................................61 Portals as Gateways ....................................................................61 Portals as Billboards ...................................................................61 Portals as Networks ....................................................................62 Portals as Niches.........................................................................63 Portals as Brands.........................................................................64 Pinterest as a Portal.....................................................................64 IV. PINTEREST AND THE VISUAL WEB ...............................................67 V. THE INTERSECTION OF EMOTION AND VISUAL PERCEPTION ONLINE..................................................................................................75 Overview of Emotion Research........................................................76 Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience......81 Aesthetics in UX and Website Design..............................................84 Implications for Pinterest..................................................................87 IV. ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN WEB CREDIBILITY AND E- COMMERCE..........................................................................................88 Credibility and Website Aesthetics...................................................89 Credibility as a Visually Determined Variable.................................91 Transference of Credibility on Portal Sites.......................................94 Implications for Pinterest Users........................................................95 VII. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION ..................................................96 vi Pinboard Metaphor ...........................................................................97 Scrapbook Metaphor.........................................................................99 Portal Metaphor ..............................................................................102 Carryover Effects............................................................................103 Media Literacy vs. Visual Intelligence ...........................................104 Suggestions for Future Research ....................................................107 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………..…………………………………………111 vii FIGURES Figure 1. Typical pin with rollover features..............................................................21 2. Drop-down content category menu............................................................22 3. User profile page/homepage with drop-down menu..................................23 4. Pop-out pin view........................................................................................25 5. Everything page .........................................................................................26 6. We Heart It homepage ...............................................................................28 7. Pregnancy bulletin board post and digital signature example ...................39 8. Pinterest pregnancy search term example..................................................42 9. Friendship-related pin sample....................................................................47 10. Pinterest “design” category screenshot......................................................52 11. Niice.co website screenshot.......................................................................53 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION “Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organizing things you love,” according to its website (Pinterest, 2013). The website functions like an interactive, digital pinboard, but has otherwise been described as a social image bookmarking tool, virtual scrapbook, visual content-sharing platform and even an inspiration engine (e.g. Chafkin, 2012; Engauge, n.d.; Goodman, 2011, etc.). Pinterest users, referred to as “pinners,” “pin” or post images from across the web onto “boards,” or categorized collections (Pinterest, 2013). Like most other social networks, Pinterest allows users to follow one another, share content, make comments, tag other users in their pins and share pins on Facebook and Twitter (BlueGlass, n.d.). Unlike most (if not all) other social networks, however, Pinterest has achieved remarkably high traffic with remarkable speed, surpassing the 10- million-visitor mark within less than two years of its invite-only launch in March 2010 (Constine, 2012). Its popularity grew 4,377% between 2011 and 2012 (Perez, 2012), and it attracted 2.7 million users while still in invitation-only mode, accounting only for those who logged in via Facebook (BlueGlass, n.d.). Not surprisingly, the hugely successful startup became the third largest social network in 2012 (Wasserman, 2012; Duggan & Brenner, 2013), making its version of the pinboard possibly more of a household concept than that of the physical object on which it was based. As of March 2013, Pinterest is the 16th most popular website in America and 35th most popular website in the world in terms of traffic (Alexa, 2013).Valued at $2.5 billion in February 2013, Pinterest