4. Founder Ben Silbermann (left)
Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service
designed to enable saving and discovery of information
(specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on
a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form
of pinboards.
The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul
Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and had over 430 million
global monthly active users as of February
2022.[4] It is operated by Pinterest, Inc., based
in San Francisco. Headquarters San Francisco, California
5. The idea for Pinterest
emerged from an earlier app
called Tote, which served as
a virtual replacement for
paper catalogues.
Tote users were, however, amassing large
collections of favorite items and sharing them with
other users. The behavior struck a chord with
Silberman, and he shifted the company to building
Pinterest, which allowed users to create collections
of a variety of items and share with each other.
The development of Pinterest began in December
2009 and nine months after the launch in March
2010, the website had 10,000 users. Silbermann
said he wrote to the first 5,000 users, offering
his phone number and even meeting with some of
them.
Timeline of Pinterest……
6. Pinterest focuses most of its effort in
allowing users, its Pinners, to curate and
handpick content.
Pinterest defines a Pin as “an
idea represented by an image or
video, regularly linked to other
websites that showcase a variety
of content and ideas for Pinners
to explore.”
The Pinterest mission is
“to help people discover
and do things they love.”
Pinterest focuses on making this curated
environment thrive. Therefore, the majority of Pins
get handpicked, saved and organized by its user
base. Those Pins are then matched with billions of
boards to form the so-called Pinterest taste graph.
7. There are various types of pins like :
Product pin, Shop the look, Video pins.
For instance, with a product Pin, an item can be shoppable.
To better
understand how
Pinterest works,
when a user saves
or “pins” an image
of Machu Picchu
this might get
initially saved by
the Pinner to a
board name for
instance “Bucket
List.”
However, as that
Pin will be
available and
discoverable,
thousands of users
will be able to
save that image on
other boards.
Pinterest’s primary source of revenue is what it calls “promoted
pins.” These special pins are effectively advertisements, paid
for by identified sponsors.
8.
9. In 2020, two former Pinterest employees, Ifeoma Ozoma
and Aerica Shimizu Banks went public about their
experience at Pinterest. Both women recounted
experiences of discrimination at work, including racist
comments, unequal pay, and punishment for speaking out.
Hundreds of Pinterest staff participated in a virtual
walkout in support of the former colleagues.
Pinterest agreed to pay its former Chief Operating
Officer a record-breaking $20M+ to settle a
lawsuit.
10. Pinterest's revenue is driven by
interest and use of its platform,
which is increasingly popular among
fashion and beauty brands. Given
that the users of Pinterest are
overwhelmingly female and have
above-average incomes, using its
platform as an gateway is more than
ideal.
Pinterest's user base has grown over
the years, where it’s carved out a
niche that allows it to not directly
compete with the likes of Facebook.
Pinterest appears to be picking up even more
momentum in the social media spectrum. Recent
research from Compete’s Online Shopper
Intelligence Survey revealed that approximately
one-quarter of social media users have been
spending more time on the image-centric
platform than on other social media networks.
Given the impressive impact of the
social site on consumer engagement,
brand awareness, and purchasing
behavior, it’s clear that more and more
consumers have their eyes on Pinterest
and that marketers must include it in
their social media marketing efforts.
