e-commerce companies,
Pinterest taps into a simple
truth. In Pinterest’s case, the simple
truth is that people love to collect things,
and show off their collections to others.
And like other Internet firms that have
goals of global scope, such as Google,
Facebook, and Amazon, Pinterest also
has a global mission: to connect everyone
in the world through the things they
find interesting. How? Founded in 2009
by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra and launched in March
2010, Pinterest allows you to create
virtual scrapbooks of images, video, and
other content that you “pin” to a virtual
bulletin board or pin board on the Web site. Categories range from Animals to Videos,
with Food & Drink, DIY & Crafts, and Women’s Fashion among the most popular. Find
something that you particularly like? In addition to “liking” and perhaps commenting
on it, you can re-pin it to your own board, or follow a link back to the original source.
Find someone whose taste you admire or who shares your passions? You can follow one
or more of that pinner’s boards to keep track of everything she or he pins.
Reportedly the fastest Web site in history to reach 10 million users, Pinterest
currently has more than 50 million users, more than double from the previous year.
According to some tracking services, it is now the third most visited social network
in the United States, behind Facebook and Twitter. It is also one of the “stickiest”
sites on the Web—according to comScore, users spend an average of 80 minutes per
session on Pinterest, and almost 60% of users with accounts visit once or more a week.
Jeff Jordan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm and investor
in Pinterest, says he has seen only one other site with similar numbers—Facebook.
And like Facebook before it, Pinterest has begun a transition toward monetizing that
appeal. The first step, in November 2012, was to offer business accounts that provide
additional resources for brands. Currently, there is no charge for a business account, but
that clearly may change in the future. In March 2013, Pinterest introduced a new Web
analytics tool, also currently free, that helps Web site owners understand how people
are using pinned material that has originated from their Web sites. Shortly thereafter, it began a revamp of its look, in an effort to help users discover new content more
effectively and interact with it and other Pinterest users. In May 2013, it introduced
its first localized site, for the United Kingdom, with another localized site for France
reportedly in the wings.
Whole Foods, the natural foods supermarket chain, was one of the first companies
to develop a presence on Pinterest, and now has more than 120,000 followers. It doesn’t
use Pinterest to advertise its own products in an overt way. Instead, it uses Pinterest as
a way to communicate Whole Foods’ core values through carefully curating and presenting
images relevant to those values. Pinterest is also having an impact on the magazine
world. For instance, Time Inc.’s Real Simple, also an early adopter, is one of the mostfollowed
brands on Pinterest, with more than 300,000 followers. Pinterest has become a
leading source of traffic to the Real Simple Web site, providing twice as many referrals
as Facebook and Twitter combined. Other publishers are experiencing similar results.
For consumers, Pinterest can function both as a source of inspiration and aspiration.
It has proven to be very popular for creating shopping wish lists and a great way to get
ideas. Retailers, in particular, have taken notice and for good reason: several reports have
shown that Pinterest helps drive shoppers to make purchases. For example, a study of
25,000 online stores using the Shopify e-commerce platform found there was as much
traffic originating from Pinterest as from Twitter, and that Pinterest users spent an
average of $80 each time they made an online purchase, twice the amount of Facebook
users. Bizrate Insights found that almost a third of online shoppers surveyed had made a
purchase based on what they had seen on Pinterest and other image-sharing sites; an even
higher percentage (37%) had seen items they wanted to buy but had not yet purchased.
There clearly remains room for growth, however. According to Internet Retailer, almost
half of the retailers it surveyed in 2013 did not yet have a presence on Pinterest.
Pinterest’s Web site was created using Django, an open source Web 2.0 framework
that uses the Python programming language, which enables rapid development and
reusability of components, coupled with elegant design. As with Facebook and Twitter,
many third-party developers have also joined the party, with additional apps, browser
extensions, and other third-party content that leverage off of the Pinterest platform. For
instance, Zoomingo offers both a Web site and a mobile shopping app that allows you to
find and get sale alerts for items you and others have pinned. Pinterest is also aggressive
about leveraging ties to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter—when you
register, you can do so via Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. Once you’ve registered, you can
easily add Pinterest to your Facebook Timeline or link to your Twitter account.
On the mobile front, Pinterest introduced its own iPhone app in March 2011 and has
frequently updated it since then, and an iPad app is also available. However, rather than
develop additional stand-alone apps for Android, BlackBerry, or Windows smartphones,
Pinterest chose a different route: to create a mobile version of its Web site using HTML5.
Unlike an app, Pinterest Mobile runs inside the smartphone’s browser rather than as a
stand-alone program, and is able to serve multiple platforms.
Despite all the good news for Pinterest, there are some significant issues lurking
just behind the scenes that may cloud its future; chief among them is copyright infringement.
The basis of Pinterest’s business model involves users potentially violating others’
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