Why We Heart It Could Be the Next Big Social Network

We Heart It hopes to catch Facebook.

For a taste of who uses the image-based social network We Heart It, look no further than Facebook.

A simple Graph Search query for "People who work at We Heart It" returns hundreds of results, many of them young females with titles like "Boss," "Heartbreaker," and even "Chief Executive Officer," all claiming to work at the 2-year-old startup.

10 Hot Social Networks to Watch

This list is not the actual staff roster from the San Francisco-based social network. In fact, We Heart It has only 18 employees. Instead, these are the platform's loyal users, and the counterfeit job titles somewhat baffle, but ultimately please, the startup's actual CEO, Ranah Edelin.

If you aren't familiar with We Heart It, there's a relatively good reason. The company didn't share a single press release until last June, when it announced 20 million monthly active users and $8 million in funding. That monthly actives number is up to 25 million, and the Pinterest look-alike is adding well over one million new users each month.

We Heart It isn't simply collecting users, however. The social network is collecting the most coveted users available to social media platforms: the ever-important, mobile-savvy teenagers.

Roughly 80% of We Heart It's monthly users are under the age of 24, and the same percentage of the platform's activity comes from users on mobile devices. Pinterest's demographic is very much the opposite. Roughly 80% of Pinterest users are overthe age of 24. (Pinterest has similar mobile usage — more than 75%, according to a spokesperson.)

And with teenagers reportedly leaving other larger social networks like Facebook behind, We Heart It hopes to be there to catch them.

"Because [Facebook] is so large, it cannot be cool to the younger demographic that thrives on finding places to call their own, that are cool" says Edelin. "[Places] that their mother, grandmother, uncle and everybody else aren't on. That's not Facebook's fault, that's just human nature."