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Pinterest S-1

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Re: Pinterest S-1

#101

Post by buboard »

friedman23 wrote: post #86
seanwilson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it manage to rank so well? I'm not a user of it but whenever it appears in searches it feels like endless popups and walled content that tries to make you sign up. I would have thought Google would discourage links like this.

I think it's pretty clear that almost everyone that uses hackernews is in a bubble and this bubble does not include people that use Pinterest.

if people use it because it is spammy and plasters itself on user's faces, then it's right to call them out for it

Re: Pinterest S-1

#102

Post by [deleted] »

president wrote: post #61

For those who don't seem to understand what Pinterest is aside from appearing on search results in Google, it's essentially a more photo-centric version of sub-reddits. If you're not into arts, crafts, design, or curating things, you probably wouldn't really use it.

[deleted]

Re: Pinterest S-1

#103

Post by filoleg »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #70
hodder wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If they can improve international monetization then there is a lot of room for revenue growth it would seem." A universal truth in the social network space. Unfortunately, not even FB can really extract much value outside of North America.

> Unfortunately, not even FB can really extract much value outside of North America. Unfortunately for whom?

For companies that are trying to monetize outside of North America.

Re: Pinterest S-1

#104

Post by [deleted] »

dymk wrote: post #87
opportune wrote: post #57

Does pinterest count impressions from google images as active/distinct user? Wouldn't surprise me if they did that atrocious image search seo to juice up the MAU numbers. I probably live in a bubble but nobody I know uses pinterest.

Pinterest's primary demographic is women

[deleted]

Re: Pinterest S-1

#105

Post by yep8883 »

jbduler wrote: post #65
obeattie wrote: post #49

"We currently depend on the continued services and performance of our key personnel, including Benjamin Silbermann and others. Mr. Silbermann’s employment, and the employment of our other key personnel, is at will, which means they may resign or be terminated for any reason at any time." Genuine question: is it normal for the CEO of a company in the US to have no notice period?

To be more accurate California is an at will state (for everybody: low level employees and CEO's) and non-compete are illegal. Other states are different. It exists to protect the interests of employees. The flipside is if you do resign you don't have to wait 2 months before you leave. It is good practice though to give at least a two week notice.

by default every employee in the US is "at-will" and can quit or be fired at any time unless they have a contract or are in union which has a contract.

Re: Pinterest S-1

#106

Post by airstrike »

GordonS wrote: post #97
airstrike wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my Latin American perspective, I'd say it's due to way less disposable income in emerging markets and less of a consumerism mindset. America has the benefit of decades of intense consumerist propaganda to fend off the evil reds, while the biggest emerging markets are often very vocally against "Capitalism" (even if they would all love to own iPhones)

What about Europe, especially Western and Northern - plenty of disposable income to go round there?

Not really... wages suck and taxes are massive. They just have an absurd level of government welfare

Re: Pinterest S-1

#107

Post by sonnyblarney »

sharkweek wrote: post #64
dsl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A universal truth in the social network space. In all of advertising. Non-US users remain extremely hard to monetize across the board.

ELI5 - are there any prevailing theories as to why this is?

The first-order issues are:

a) Money. Most places do not have a lot of surplus wealth, and only a few places in Europe do. Consumers need to have extra money to spend on 'stuff' beyond the very basics, i.e. a consumer oriented economy for a lot of ads to work.

b) Fragmentation. This is a two-sided problem. Most countries are very small, have their own laws, regs, and networks for everything that are very established. So the unit cost of marketing to advertisers etc. is going to be higher. And things move slower in most places.

c) Behaviour. American culture is pop culture. Sometimes it's hard to explain that one. Americans move according to trends. Social mores change quickly depending on whoever has the biggest megaphone: news, broadcasters, even advertisers. It's a place where commercial interests drive aspiration, even morality - witness the amount of virtue signalling in ads, i.e. Nike's recent campaign etc.

W. Europe, the other lucrative market - they are really traditional in their ways. They already have their day full of things to do. Germans leave work at 5 and go and drink a specific kind of beer at the local pub. They play certain kinds of sports. They buy certain things. In the UK, I've been to 'rich people's' homes and they have these ancient toasters. But they work! They don't just 'buy new stuff' it's not part of their culture. It's the same in most of the rest of the world.

The rest of the world is really just not designed as a big commercial vehicle.

Re: Pinterest S-1

#108

Post by troydavis »

OldFatCactus wrote: post #31

I hate what Pinterest does to google image searching. Sometimes I really just want to paste an image src in an online discussion without having to drill into devtools.

I was curious how Pinterest addresses that in their S-1. Here’s how they put it:

> We depend in part on internet search engines to direct traffic and refer new users to our service. If search engines’ methodologies and policies are modified or enforced in ways we do not anticipate, or if our search results page rankings decline for other reasons, traffic to our service or user growth, retention or engagement could decline, any of which could harm our business, revenue and financial results.

> We depend in part on internet search engines, such as Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex, to direct a significant amount of traffic to our service. For example, when a user types a query into a search engine, we may receive traffic and acquire new users when those search results include Pins, boards, Pinners and other features of our service that cause the user to click on the Pinterest result or create a Pinterest account. These actions increase Pinner growth due to signups of new users and increase retention and engagement of existing Pinners.

> Our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our service from search engines is not within our control. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, that we are not able to predict or without prior notice. When that occurs, we expect to experience declines or de-indexing in the organic search ranking of certain Pinterest search results, leading to a decrease in traffic to our service, new user signups and existing user retention and engagement. We have experienced declines in traffic and user growth as a result of these changes in the past, and anticipate fluctuations as a result of such actions in the future. For example, in the first quarter of 2018, Google de-indexed our keyword landing pages, which negatively impacted traffic and user growth in the quarters that followed. Our ability to appeal these actions is limited, and we may not be able to revise our search engine optimization (“SEO”) strategies to recover the loss in traffic or user growth resulting from such actions. Changes in policies or their enforcement may not apply in the same manner to our competitors, or our competitors’ SEO strategies may be more successful than ours. In addition, some of these search engines are owned by companies that compete with various aspects of our business. To offset the impact on our user growth, we would need to increase our investment in other growth strategies, such as paid marketing or other initiatives that drive user acquisition, which may cost more and be less effective. Any significant reduction in the number of Pinners directed to our website or mobile application from search engines could harm our business, revenue and financial results.

Re: Pinterest S-1

#109

Post by maxxxxx »

holy_city wrote: post #72
leokennis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for a CEO I’d understand but being a regular employee and knowing that you could be out of a job and pay at any time, for any arbitrary reason or no reason at all, without being able to do anything about it seems like such a shaky foundation to build your life on...

That's pretty standard for the United States. On the flipside, it means the employer isn't required to keep employing you no matter what. Most unions will negotiate it (this is why Police go on paid suspensions instead of being fired, it's part of their CBA), but the vast majority of us aren't members of a union. Furthermore if you're terminated without cause, you're eligible for unemployment. In practice companies d…

"people don't live in constant fear of being terminated if they're providing value to their employer,"

That has almost nothing to do with being laid off or not. Most layoffs kill whole departments or divisions and the contribution of the little guy matters not a single bit.

Re: Pinterest S-1

#110

Post by Theodores »

tuckermi wrote: post #80
john_moscow wrote: post #39

I am genuinely curious, how does the year-over-year growth of 60% come together with the pretty consistent "death curve" according to Google Trends [0]. Could they have deliberately lowered the revenue in 2017 through some clever accounting in order to come up with this number? As they have been around since ~2012, are there any prior financial metrics publicly available? [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?…

The story looks different (albeit short of YoY +60%) if you look at Trends for Image Search: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all_2008&geo=U...

Well spotted.

The main search is definitely the mySpace trajectory:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...

...but you have found the more accurate guess-data.

Pinterest have presumably done well with Google's carousel that shows image search results at the top of the list.

I am not sure the HN crowd is target demographic. Who here is looking for a new outfit to buy and wear? Who is wanting inspiration for some 'infinity band' tattoo?

People here just end up on Pinterest wanting images for projects, no intention of pinning boards together.

Why does this happen?

Pinterest have built a body of content that is essentially evergreen and well documented as far as images go. Nobody is interested in last week's news but images don't have this problem. Hence they get the image search results traffic.

Beyond that they do have their regular crowd looking for inspiration on clothes, home trinkets and what not. The search result blessings keep them relevant even if nobody outside the target demographic is actively using it.

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