Pintrest

Market position

Pinterest is one of the largest social media services in the United States, ranked among the top ten social networks as early as December 2011 and the fastest site at the time to pass 10 million unique monthly US visitors. It is a publicly traded company and an S&P 400 component with 553 million monthly active users reported for 2024. Its search and visual-discovery ambitions have been described as facing competition from Google, whose "Style Ideas" feature was positioned against Pinterest in 2017.

The service distinguishes itself from feed-based social networks by organising content into user-curated boards used for personal collection and idea discovery rather than social interaction, and by combining that with visual search and shopping features that link inspiration directly to purchasable products.

Technology

The platform is built around image-based pinboards, visual search and personalised recommendation feeds. Through the acquisition of The Yes, Pinterest gained an extensive fashion taxonomy combining human expertise and machine learning to power product-finding algorithms, which the company intended to extend beyond apparel into categories such as home, beauty and food. Other technology additions include the Vochi editing and video creation app and live-streaming tools via Pinterest TV studio.

Go-to-market

Pinterest reaches consumers directly through its website and mobile apps, distributed on major app stores where the Android app ranks as a top free lifestyle app with over one billion downloads. On the commercial side it sells advertising to brands and retailers, courts creators publishing video and livestream content, and partners with data platforms such as LiveRamp, which in January 2023 enabled advertiser data 'clean rooms' with grocery retailer Albertsons as the first pilot advertiser.

Consumers seeking ideas and inspiration across categories such as recipes, home, fashion, beauty and DIY, and on the commercial side advertisers, brands, retailers and creators who want to reach those users; the platform reported 553 million monthly active users in 2024.

Geography

The company is American, headquartered in San Francisco, California, with its consumer service distributed internationally, including a UK-facing presence; user reviews come from markets including the United States, Mexico and Nigeria.

History

Pinterest grew out of Tote, an earlier app by Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra that acted as a digital replacement for paper catalogues but struggled because of immature mobile payments technology. Observing that Tote users were collecting and sharing favourite items, Silbermann pivoted the company toward Pinterest. Development began in December 2009 and a closed beta launched in March 2010, reaching 10,000 users nine months later. Growth accelerated in 2011-2012: Time listed the site among its "50 Best Websites of 2011", Hitwise ranked it a top-10 social network in December 2011 with 11 million weekly visits, and comScore reported 11.7 million unique US visitors in January 2012. The company filed confidentially for an IPO in early 2019 at a reported $12 billion valuation and listed on the NYSE on April 18, 2019. It acquired the video editing app Vochi in December 2021 and the AI shopping startup The Yes in 2022. In June 2022 Ben Silbermann moved to the role of executive chairman and Bill Ready became CEO.

Risks & controversies

User reviews on app stores and review sites raise recurring complaints about advertising density in the feed and in printable content, repeated-content and posting bugs, and, in one 2018 review, the appearance of sexual imagery in ordinary search results. In March 2012 the company revised its terms of service to remove a clause granting it the right to sell users' content. Its Google Play listing discloses that the app may collect and share categories of data including location and personal information.