Online scrapbooking site, Pinterest, saw massive growth over the last 12 months, which it was reported to be having difficulty handling with its 20-strong staff. Since then, however, the site’s employee numbers have grown to around 100 and they have moved offices from a small building in Pal Alto, CA (News - Alert), to a warehouse office in San Francisco. The site is now fixing its attention on generating revenue, with advertising systems, online retail profit-sharing and traffic partnerships all in development, according to a report yesterday from the Wall Street Journal.
Although so far unprofitable, this rapid growth, development and future promise has attracted the attention of investors, who have valued the site at between $2 billion and $2.5 billion during financing talks with Pinterest themselves. The site was last financed in May 2012, to the tune of $100 million, by Japanese company Rakuten.
Business partnerships Pinterest have been developing over the last twelve months include the site Allrecipes.com, which has been a long-standing user and has enjoyed traffic surges from the site since 2011 – up to 6.5 times more than from their Facebook (News - Alert) page. Since first partnering with Pinterest, Allrecipes.com is now often given previews of upcoming code-changes and consulted on partnership opportunities.
As part of their expansion and revenue-generating plans, Pinterest has an international site set for launch later this year, as well as a mobile app. The site is also expecting to increase its employee count to around 200 by the end of the year, and sees the future of their service as a highly-personalised and simpler one.
Businesses are particularly interested in Pinterest, over competitors such as Facebook or Twitter, because of the life-cycle of “pinned” content. Brian Madden, Executive Director of Social Media for Hearst Corporation’s (News - Alert) Heart Digital Media, explained that the longevity of content on Pinterest was particularly valuable to them and this is reflected in the numbers; traffic to Hearst’s brand through Pinterest is often double that of Facebook- and Twitter (News - Alert)-generated traffic combined.