I was browsing Pintrest this morning on my iPhone and noticed something strange. Most of the pictures that were being shared had a ridiculously large amount of “likes” and “repins”. Here are some examples:

So to review, we have the following stats:

#1: Likes = 211,211 , Repins = 11,831,183
#2: Likes = 6,060 , Repins = 398,398
#3: Likes = 5,858 , Repins = 333,333

Wow! 11 million repins?!? Could this be real?? Then I looked at the numbers more closely. All of the numbers share one interesting characteristic, they are all a sequence of digits that is repeated TWICE. Take 211,211 – this is simply 211 repeated twice. Same with 11,831,183 and 1183. You get the picture.

So what’s going on here? There are 3 possibilities:
1. These numbers are accurate – very unlikely!
2. These numbers are due to a deliberate deception by Pintrest to make their site look more popular that it actually is – unlikely…
3. These numbers are due to a bug – most likely!