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Pinterest Raises $200M

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Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#21

Post by jmduke »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

I've heard the name and ignored it. But what the hell, let's take a look. Obviously, this website is very popular with some people but if you go to the default page you get this: http://imgur.com/XWdkO8i ...a popup that says "He used Pinterest to start his collection" on top of a blurry background. Who's "He"? Sign up with Facebook? Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really? The very worst aspect of 1990s web de…

Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really?

The likely rationale behind the immediate experience of a site that traffics in millions of uniques is that 'the numbers say that the visitors who respond positively to this outweigh the visitors who respond negatively'. In particular, I'd be willing to guess that Pinterest used gendered language in their lead-in because they're in a unique position of having a female user base which outnumbers their male one, and the bounce rate here is much smaller than opening pinterest.com to see a smorgasbord of recipes and pictures of clothing in sepia.

A lot of your other complaints (like expecting the 45 seconds to be a timer) appear to be intentionally dense: I don't mean that to disparage you, but I think your interpretation is quite different than the average person Pinterest is trying to entice (that is, one with an average amount of experience on the internet.)

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#22

Post by alaskamiller »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

I've heard the name and ignored it. But what the hell, let's take a look. Obviously, this website is very popular with some people but if you go to the default page you get this: http://imgur.com/XWdkO8i ...a popup that says "He used Pinterest to start his collection" on top of a blurry background. Who's "He"? Sign up with Facebook? Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really? The very worst aspect of 1990s web de…

Trying too hard.

Pinterest's value add is applying "pinteresty" context to media objects. A link is just a link, an image just an image, text is just text. But we tune in to sites that deliver more context in addition to sharing those links.

An image shared on Tumblr has tags, affinity score, related notes, reblogged discussions.

That same image existing on Flickr has EXIF data, geotags, discussions.

On Facebook there's value based on perceived relevancy in my friend group.

That same image existing on Pinterest has context such as categorization, relations, and scoring.

For people in those self-identified communities they apply more value to those things on a daily, hourly, and even second by second basis.

Until it's no longer relevant.

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#23

Post by harryh »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

I've heard the name and ignored it. But what the hell, let's take a look. Obviously, this website is very popular with some people but if you go to the default page you get this: http://imgur.com/XWdkO8i ...a popup that says "He used Pinterest to start his collection" on top of a blurry background. Who's "He"? Sign up with Facebook? Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really? The very worst aspect of 1990s web de…

It sounds like you're being intentionally obtuse to be honest.

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#24

Post by bobbles »

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

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#25

Post by 120738470293740 »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

I've heard the name and ignored it. But what the hell, let's take a look. Obviously, this website is very popular with some people but if you go to the default page you get this: http://imgur.com/XWdkO8i ...a popup that says "He used Pinterest to start his collection" on top of a blurry background. Who's "He"? Sign up with Facebook? Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really? The very worst aspect of 1990s web de…

I am in agreement with how jmduke responded to your comment, but wanted to add a couple things.

I contracted with Pinterest for several months on a team directly adjacent to the team responsible for designing, testing, and building the logged out home page you see here. It was very thorough, going through immense amounts of research with a multitude of completely different design experiences, and this page (and the others in this set) tested better than everything else throughout the process. And the team didn't simply A/B test what had the highest conversion, they tested sentiment in terms of: "After converting from this specific experience, is using the actual product in line with what that landing page led me to believe?"

I got to see this process firsthand, be in meetings that involved discussions around how to handle a massively important project like this, and I couldn't imagine the team doing a better job.

It's easy to dismiss this when you aren't a user and don't see it as useful for you specifically. But the landing page isn't aimed at you. It's aimed at many demographics who could find it useful if they arrived here. And in that regard, after seeing the improvement in actual conversion data myself, I find it successful thus far.

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#26

Post by adventured »

loceng wrote: post #3

I imagine Facebook will try to acquire Pinterest - if there is any money left.

$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.

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#28

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

I've heard the name and ignored it. But what the hell, let's take a look. Obviously, this website is very popular with some people but if you go to the default page you get this: http://imgur.com/XWdkO8i ...a popup that says "He used Pinterest to start his collection" on top of a blurry background. Who's "He"? Sign up with Facebook? Why? And all this confusion in a popup? Really? The very worst aspect of 1990s web de…

> What am I doing wrong?

I'm guessing you're a male?

Last I checked, Pinterest was overwhelmingly used by women, which is both a blessing (very few web sites appeal so massively to women) and a curse (they are trying hard to find out how they can attract males).

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#29

Post by adventured »

cletus wrote: post #14

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 prepar…

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.

http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-pinterest-an-overnight...

Re: Pinterest Raises $200M

#30

Post by sugerman »

nostromo wrote: post #6
austenallred wrote: post #4

Pinterest adds considerably more value to my life than any other social network. It provides inspiration that plans my meals, my vacations, my clothing, the style of my home, etc.

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.

Do you find UI inspiration by searching or just have you started following people who pin related items?
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