“Western Gothic,” jellyfish, and blue makeup—these are among the trends Pinterest predicts will be big in 2024. At its pop-up shop in New York City’s Meatpacking District, Pinterest put these delights on display in early December, creating an experiential shop stocked with metallic boots, colorful glassware, and jelly-inspired fashion.
But there’s a catch: Nothing in the store was for sale. People could scan QR codes on products that took them to places to buy. For example, scan a heart-shaped Le Creuset pan placed on a stove in the shop’s “kitschen” (a colorful and quirky kitschy kitchen) and you can buy it directly from Williams Sonoma’s website.
It’s among Pinterest’s first forays into some version of in-person shopping, and mirrors a recent push by the company to be a place where people can find things they like and then click out to buy them. All of this is happening as Pinterest’s popularity grows: The platform’s monthly active users hit 482 million in the third quarter of 2023, and revenue was up 11 percent year-over-year.
In 2023, Pinterest had a moment—and that’s thanks to Gen Z-ers. They make up more than 40 percent of its active monthly users and are now the platform’s fastest growing demographic, outpacing the millennials who first discovered and popularized the platform with mood boards and wedding planning pins.
Experts say Pinterest is also growing because it fills a different, more positive niche than other forms of social media, serving as a place for exploration and creativity rather than a race for likes and views. That’s also something companies, some of whom have become wary of Elon Musk’s X, are eying.
Social media apps have been under fire for potential harm to teens’ mental health. But Pinterest may function differently, says MaryLeigh Bliss, chief content officer of YPulse, a Gen Z and millennial market research firm. It’s a “place of solace,” instead of one of comparing and competing, she argues. “It’s a little bit stripped of all that algorithm competition,” she says. People can use Pinterest to find inspiration for hobbies, travel, decor, and style—without having to show themselves living out all those aspirational, and often expensive, trends, or images of their faces and bodies. “That really sets the platform apart,” says Bliss “There’s really nowhere else that they can do that.”
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