Facebook is the most popular social network with 845 million users and allows users to register and create a profile. They can add other users as friends and then they can exchange messages and communicate with each other. Facebook is about having your real friends or people you know in a digital social network. Facebook gives the ability to the users to post on their wall about anything that is on their mind. This feature allows to the users to see what their friends thinking at the moment and then discuss about that instantly. Users can also share photos, so their friends can watch them, like them, or even comment them.
Facebook is trying to suggest to the users some other users that may know. Most common example is when Facebook suggest us a user that we have many common friends, so there is a high possibility that we already know each other, but we are not friends on Facebook.
When creating your Facebook profile at the beginning you can enter information such like what school you went, where you work, what are your interests and much more. For “X”, we could get a user’s information (if he gives us the permission) to get what his interests are and what he is tend to like so we can use this information to suggest him other users.
Pinterest is a web application for sharing interesting videos and photos. It borrows the idea of pining and board from real life. Users can create a board which is an abstract concept and pin images and videos on it. By pinning interesting things on boards, they are able to share these interesting items to their friends(followers). If a photo, for example, hits a user’s interest, they can repin it to their own board.
Users can pin both inside Pinterest and outside the application. Pinterest provides a “pin it” button that can be added to bookmark bar in the browser so when users find interesting photos or videos, by clicking the button, the images or vides are added to Pinterest seamlessly.
Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting. We think that a favourite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. [1]
This is the goal that is stated by the creators of Pinterest. With very limited short of time, Pinterest has indeed attract million users. [2] Not only the number of users has increased in a short of time, but also the referral traffic. According to a study, Pinterest now generates more referral traffic than Twitter. [3]
Moreover, Pinterest has arguably behaved even better than Facebook as an e-business platform. Since it has already be generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue through affiliate fees received from vendors who are refereed users from the service. [4]