The Business of Pinterest, Inc.

ANNA AFFIAS It’s happening! Pinterest, Inc. is working on closing the gap to a missing link in its business: revenue. For most of last year, the rapidly growing, gridded “pinning” site, also known as Pinterest, has been trying to keep up with a growth burst that took global user visits on its website from nine million to 48 million in only a year’s time, according to the research firm comScore, Inc. With potential advertising opportunities knocking at their door, it’s time to start talking about how Pinterest traffic will eventually convert to advertising and how Pinterest may eventually be able to take a cut of that growth. Jeremy Levine, a Bessemer venture capitalist who also sits on Pinterest’s board states, “They’ve gotten past the point of being successful with consumers in a big way [and] at some point, the business has to make money.” While conversation has been heating up, Pinterest has continued to keep their research process slow, thorough and quiet. Lawrence Lenihan, founder and managing director at FirstMark Capital, who invested early on in Pinterest agrees that Pinterest “is a marketing platform [and] there’s a lot more to go and a lot more to figure out.” Although declining to go into much detail of future advertising plans, Chief Executive Ben Silbermann said the company plans to unveil a “suggestions” feature this year, which will appeal to regular Pinterest users serendipitously allowing them to discover new content. As an example, someone who adds and tags images of beaches to their pinboard(s) might also see a “suggestion” for a Hawaiian resort. For all of you looking for the next big thing besides Pinterest, look no further, Vine is here. Vine is a new video app allowing users to upload and post six seconds of video content. Its secret weapon is the ease of usability as a video app backed by Twitter, one of the biggest social networks in the world. “It’s really beautifully integrated with Twitter and there’s a new level of simplicity around video capture that they hit on that [is] intriguing to the people [at Twitter],” said Pam Kramer, president at Lightt and former VP of consumer marketing at Twitter. “I think it moved a step ahead from integrating a still photo to integrating something more dynamic.” Whether you’re looking to see how advertising unfolds within Pinterest or looking to make your first Vine video, there’s one thing for certain, social media isn’t going away. Social media is writing the content for tomorrow’s businesses and expanding at a rapid rate. To post or not to post is no longer the question; rather, what are you pinpointing in your next post and how will that impact discovering your future content?