[pjc50]

It's interesting that at no point in the process is any mention made of communicating with the users. I appreciate that detailed useful feedback is hard to get, especially from people who are disengaging already, but surely it has to be in there somewhere?

[mfjordvald]

> While we were building the model we also wanted to figure out what to do for these Pinners once we could target them. We thought it would be best to ask them, as they surely would know why they were using Pinterest less. So we did an in-product survey for a sample set, and found the most common reason for not using Pinterest was that they got busy.

They did mention contacting users and, as is usual, got only the symptom, not the underlying cause. Talking to users is great to understand why something happens is great, but it has to be translated through deep product insight to be useful.

[Rjevski]

Why would "being busy" be the symptom and not the cause?

I used similar platforms in the past. When I have time I'd spend a lot of it on there, and when I didn't have time anymore (new job, etc) I didn't use the platform much. This is perfectly normal and no amount of "retentions" or "re-engagement" bullshit will make me spend more time on there unless they pay me enough where spending time on the platform becomes more lucrative than my day job.

[seanhunter]

Because everyone is busy, and the users probably always were busy. The thing to figure out is why they were using pinterest before but now they aren't.

That means what's changed is now it's not enough of a priority to use vs other things in their busy lives. The next interesting "why" question is not "Why are you busy?" but something like "Why isn't pinterest valuable enough for you to use, given that you are busy?"

If you want people to use your product, you need to focus on things you control (making the product more valuable to users) rather than shrug your shoulders and give up at things you can't control (the fact that your users are busy).