I thought pinterest was a waste of time. Then I got engaged to get married.
Searching for something like 'wedding favours' on google gives a pretty boring list of top10 lists and other cruft, but a similar search on pinterest gives a great view of peoples ideas, descriptions, alternatives, etc.
For me, this type of searching is pretty rare, but pinterest is definitely the best tool I've seen for this
Another source for home decor is Houzz, which is more of a professional designer portfolio + marketplace, but also a good source of inspiration. http://www.houzz.com/stacked-washer-dryer
Me too. I use it to get inspired at work (for UI design) and home (me and my significant other have a board for backyard ideas) and creative pursuits (like graphic arts).
The space is also very monetizable.
I think Pinterest is going to be bigger than Twitter.
For me it adds very little value (by comparison I find fb to have 0 value and twitter to be very valuable)
I don't actively design day in and day out,so when I'm online I want to be informed... for me Pinterest is just eye candy and entertainment and not a tool that I use often, unlike twitter.
The one thing that annoys me about Pinterest is that it's one of those ideas I really could have thought of and done (but obviously didn't).
I don't mean this in a way to take away anything from the Pinterest team. They had a great idea and seem to be executing really well.
It's just one of those ideas that seems so obvious in hindsight, particularly if you've seen how, for example, women scrapbook for wedding preparation and the like, the rise of "selfies" (and just having a way to list what you're wearing) and so on.
There are many other services that have tried to allow you to share "things" in a given context (eg locations in Foursquare, purchases on Blippy, social integrations with the various music streaming services and so on) but the real genius of Pinterest for me is that it's really about sharing the combination of things, which is of far more value than the individual things themselves.
Pinterest is probably the startup I'm most bullish about. Seriously, congrats guys.
One of the most impressive things I've found about Pinterest's success, is that they stuck with it for over three years before it finally took off. Much like Twitter, it was anything but an overnight success. As with most concepts, getting traction is by far the most difficult aspect.
I get why Pinterest is interesting. I don't use it, but I get why people use it although maybe I should. But what I don't get is why a site with pictures to pin needs $200M. It's basically still the same site it was when it had $500K in funding. Does it cost $200M to scale from thousands of users to hundreds of millions? Wikipedia doesn't need $200M to run.
They'd be crazy not to take $200m for 4% give or take. Given the beating high flying tech stocks have taken lately on Wall St., and the continued Fed tapering, who knows how much longer the easy money gates will remain open. Better to take it now, and have tons of cash to ride out any eventuality. Bull markets don't run forever, and clearly Pinterest is hardly even in the first inning of monetization, so they're going to need the money. The public markets, even in semi-euphoric mode, will not react well to zero sales and $200m a year in losses.
It still costs money to acquire new users. It's easy to think when something becomes a household name there is no need to keep spending to bring new users on. As with most social sites the bigger the network is the harder it is for competitors to come in and steal their position. Pinterest user base is still "only" around 50 million. Thats 5% the size of Facebook.
Additionally the markets are not treating tech stocks so well right now, this might last another three months, and it might last a year and a half. What you know for sure is that you don't want to go out and try to raise money when the market is really down. You'll be terribly diluted if you're even able to raise money at all. They get what you can now, because they don't know how long it will be until the IPO.
These are only a couple of the considerations, if they are planning an IPO very soon then there's a completely different motivation. Hope this helps.
Growth...growth might be in their future plans. Acquisitions, KLO, more employees, new directions. I hope they go big. Great service, smart design that works. Monetizing would be easy.
I've always admired Pinterest. As a guy I don't really understand the appeal of it myself, but my soon-to-be wife absolutely loves it, so does her mum, her sisters, my sisters and my sisters friends. They seem to have done a fantastic job at capturing the female demographic and it has paid dividends for them.
Congratulations to the team, curious to see how Pinterest can take it to the next level. Most likely the e-commerce route is the one they will be taking.
Perhaps don't read it as "raised" but "was given". Giving away 4% for $200M seems like a fairly slick deal for a company with no revenue(?) yet.
OTOH, in 2012 Twitter spent over $250M on staff and R&D. Pinterest is nearing(?) that size of application (perhaps more as Pinterest has more photos than Twitter had), although Twitter had many more employees then (I think 1500 or so compared to "140+" WP says for Pinterest). Billions is a hell of a lot to share some SMSes.
Maybe they can use this money to hire someone who can fix their !$!@# pinit button [the small gray button with numbers on the right] to actually stay where I put it (and not move to the right 20px and bleed over other content).
Really, it's the only social button I put on each of my wife's blog posts [echoing what others have mentioned, she likes pinterest for the 'bridal trends', recipe ideas, art, ...], and it's easily the most annoying thing on the page... sure let's have the JS totally remove all the css/elements that were there and recreate it differently.
I've just pushed a test fix; if you will please add data-pin-pad-count="true" to a Pin It button that has data-pin-config="beside" you should see whitespace under your pin count.
I'm not pushing this out to everyone until I understand how badly it will break other sites that have already implemented fixes like yours.
You must have a developer account or something. Pinterest, for me, is free and they don't seem to be placing ads or monetizing sales like Etsy. I only connect to Pinterest at 3 distinct times/places: waiting rooms, king conference room (toilet), and when I'm looking for inspiration and ideas (sometimes all in one :)...so I am probably not considered a hard-core user.
How does google search attempts equal 200 million USD...if that were the case searches for Obamacare or Affordable Care Act would have paid the national debt thrice over. [I just used a gov't example, I don't care what the healthcare bill is called]
"In the future search will be a discovery tool" ... I think this sentence needs some work. It feels empty of meaning. Am I missing something? Or does the sentence really simply mean: "in the future search will be a way to discover things"?
Because in that case the future may already be here :)
It may possibly be that search today is used to find a particular thing that you are looking for (directions, a way to fix code, a specific book). Whereas in the future, search will lead you to new things that you didn't specifically know you needed to find. More like browsing random sections of a book store.
But yes, it definitely sounds like it's saying that search will be a tool to search for things.
Pinterest would be fools to accept their money at orders of magnitude better valuations. Pinterest has a solid product, a vastly better user experience (albeit solving different problems), is not pressed to find or invent business models, and could easily expand into more commercial areas. Facebook is a brand people love to hate, it has a stench of evil, and a highly uncertain financial future. What could Facebook do for Pinterest?
$12.63 billion in cash as of this latest quarter. $922m in cash flow for the quarter. It's likely they'll be seeing $5b or $6b in cash flow annually within another four to six quarters or so. They can afford it.
Slightly off-topic - my wife has 20k followers on Pinterest. Is that a lot, relatively speaking? Any suggestions as to monetisation? She already gets invited to events via Pinterest.
[+] [-] bobbles|12 years ago|reply
Searching for something like 'wedding favours' on google gives a pretty boring list of top10 lists and other cruft, but a similar search on pinterest gives a great view of peoples ideas, descriptions, alternatives, etc.
For me, this type of searching is pretty rare, but pinterest is definitely the best tool I've seen for this
[+] [-] chaz|12 years ago|reply
Another source for home decor is Houzz, which is more of a professional designer portfolio + marketplace, but also a good source of inspiration. http://www.houzz.com/stacked-washer-dryer
[+] [-] cstrat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|12 years ago|reply
It provides inspiration that plans my meals, my vacations, my clothing, the style of my home, etc.
[+] [-] nostromo|12 years ago|reply
The space is also very monetizable.
I think Pinterest is going to be bigger than Twitter.
[+] [-] dingaling|12 years ago|reply
'These are the things I want'.
Actually it's quite clever, on reflection, to have found a way to make money from consumerism without actually selling anything.
[+] [-] hagope|12 years ago|reply
I don't actively design day in and day out,so when I'm online I want to be informed... for me Pinterest is just eye candy and entertainment and not a tool that I use often, unlike twitter.
My wife however...
[+] [-] cletus|12 years ago|reply
I don't mean this in a way to take away anything from the Pinterest team. They had a great idea and seem to be executing really well.
It's just one of those ideas that seems so obvious in hindsight, particularly if you've seen how, for example, women scrapbook for wedding preparation and the like, the rise of "selfies" (and just having a way to list what you're wearing) and so on.
There are many other services that have tried to allow you to share "things" in a given context (eg locations in Foursquare, purchases on Blippy, social integrations with the various music streaming services and so on) but the real genius of Pinterest for me is that it's really about sharing the combination of things, which is of far more value than the individual things themselves.
Pinterest is probably the startup I'm most bullish about. Seriously, congrats guys.
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-pinterest-an-overnight...
[+] [-] leorocky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aclements18|12 years ago|reply
Additionally the markets are not treating tech stocks so well right now, this might last another three months, and it might last a year and a half. What you know for sure is that you don't want to go out and try to raise money when the market is really down. You'll be terribly diluted if you're even able to raise money at all. They get what you can now, because they don't know how long it will be until the IPO.
These are only a couple of the considerations, if they are planning an IPO very soon then there's a completely different motivation. Hope this helps.
[+] [-] DaniFong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gms|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalSea|12 years ago|reply
Congratulations to the team, curious to see how Pinterest can take it to the next level. Most likely the e-commerce route is the one they will be taking.
[+] [-] DaniFong|12 years ago|reply
SpaceX achieved orbital flight on that amount of capital...
[+] [-] sleepyhead|12 years ago|reply
That is a lot of money to be able to pin some photos.
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
OTOH, in 2012 Twitter spent over $250M on staff and R&D. Pinterest is nearing(?) that size of application (perhaps more as Pinterest has more photos than Twitter had), although Twitter had many more employees then (I think 1500 or so compared to "140+" WP says for Pinterest). Billions is a hell of a lot to share some SMSes.
[+] [-] penguindev|12 years ago|reply
Really, it's the only social button I put on each of my wife's blog posts [echoing what others have mentioned, she likes pinterest for the 'bridal trends', recipe ideas, art, ...], and it's easily the most annoying thing on the page... sure let's have the JS totally remove all the css/elements that were there and recreate it differently.
[+] [-] kentbrew|12 years ago|reply
I'm not pushing this out to everyone until I understand how badly it will break other sites that have already implemented fixes like yours.
Hope this helps!
[+] [-] kentbrew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uses|12 years ago|reply
Oh. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=pinterest
[+] [-] k0|12 years ago|reply
How does google search attempts equal 200 million USD...if that were the case searches for Obamacare or Affordable Care Act would have paid the national debt thrice over. [I just used a gov't example, I don't care what the healthcare bill is called]
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] goronbjorn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkwok|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|12 years ago|reply
Does that make sense to you?
[+] [-] hagope|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_benjamins|12 years ago|reply
Because in that case the future may already be here :)
[+] [-] nwenzel|12 years ago|reply
But yes, it definitely sounds like it's saying that search will be a tool to search for things.
[+] [-] loceng|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duaneb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickstinemates|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pyrrhotech|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ycpan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrecovery123|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] imperialdrive|12 years ago|reply
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