Analysis of the most popular start-up site Pinterest model: The Network of Things

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NetEase technology News March 13, Pinterest now become the Internet's hottest start-up. It has previously been reported that its users are growing faster than Facebook, which shares more traffic than Twitter. In this respect, the Jena Wottham of the New York Times (JENNA Wortham) published an article analysing Pinterest's path to growth.

The article has the following effect:

According to foreign media reports, how to make your start-up enterprises to attract people's attention? You may not think of using the vast number of ordinary netizens, but Pinterest has been a great success.

At the annual southbysouthwest (SXSW) Interactive Science and Technology conference held in Texas State, the United States, many startups are trying to woo the tech elite and influential bloggers to get people's attention, and to organise lavish parties or make various surprises.

But Pinterest, the most watched social networking site this year, is not doing that. On the contrary, when Pinterest2009 launched its service, the company tried to consult the ordinary netizens. The site allows users to create "boards" (storyboards) where they can collect pictures from the Internet and share them with friends or strangers.

Ben Silbermann, founder and chief executive of Pinterest, said: "We will Pinterest to ordinary netizens, bloggers of fashion blogs, crafts makers and various interested Berman." Pinterest's initial users came from Des Moines (Des Moines, the Iowa State capital of the United States), where I grew up, and Pinterest grew rapidly. ”

Pinterest declined to provide specific data on growth, but data from market research companies showed that the company's traffic is multiplying. Nielsen, a market-research firm, reported that in January this year, Pinterest's independent visitors to the US had reached 16.1 million, one-fold increase from last November.

This is the growth that entrepreneurs who participate in the SXSW Interactive technology conference have dreamed of, and Pinterest this focus on inland business strategies is confusing to many.

"The development model for startups in the past was that entrepreneurs had to develop products or services based on the preferences of local users in New York and San Francisco," Chris Dickson Chris Dixon said. Pinterest challenged this model. Surprisingly, Pinterest's strategy has been successful. "Dixon is an investor in companies such as Skype, Skillshare, GroupMe, and CEO of Hunch, the consumer-recommended website, hunch has been bought by ebay earlier this year.

There is no doubt that investors have been scrambling to invest in Pinterest, Dixon said. "I wouldn't be surprised about that," he said. Everyone admires Pinterest's success, and I envy it. I wish I were an investor in Pinterest. I hope I created this site. "Dixon made the announcement in a speech at the SXSW Interactive Science and technology conference in Tuesday.

Pinterest's low-key approach is important to the site because it is designed to draw people around a theme, such as medieval furniture, fancy cakes or fashion trends, to create a variety of photo collections. They are essentially making scrapbooks that link to the original source of each photograph, whether it's a museum site, a fashion blog, or an online store.

Schiber himself a collector, collecting several glass beetles and stamps as a child. Berman said Pinterest attracted such a wide range of Internet users, because the collection of this simple behavior is prevalent among people.

He said: "It's like when you go to a friend's house, you always like to see what books they have on their shelves." Pinterest based on the idea that if you can get people to collect their hobbies online, it's really exciting for people. ”

Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst at the Research Institute Altimeter Group, Susan Etlinge that Pinterest not only allows people to share simply. Etlinge says Pinterest is similar to a forum on the early web, where users gather around a very specific theme such as vegetarian recipes or tattoo art-because it allows them to dig deeper into what really interests them and to discover what other users share about the topic. She said it was an area that was prematurely abandoned by social giant Facebook.

"Facebook is used to make connections between users and friends, but as it focuses on the user timeline (timeline) and how users show up, it is now becoming more focused on individuals," Etlinge said. Facebook has never had a good tool for building workgroups, and combining users with interest is a blind spot. ”

Other social networking sites have imitated Pinterest, but have not achieved much success. For example, social networking sites ning allow people to build social networks around any obscure theme such as "popular TV programs." But it failed, in part because the site was a bit of an eyesore to the interface.

Pinterest has undergone 30 to 40 updates to determine the current messy but pleasing interface, a design that has hit the current network. There have been several Shanzhai sites, and some social networking sites have been updated to make themselves look more like Pinterest.

"Pinterest has hit a new level," said Ari Goldberg, chief executive of Stylecaster, a fashion social networking site. Since we reopened, we have seen users within 24 hours of opening the site to the site's likes, comments posted more than ever before. ”

Analysts say the popularity of Pinterest has caused a ripple effect in the Internet world, as users attracted by Pinterest, most of whom are women, overlap with users who visit a large number of goods and e-commerce sites. Radha Subramanyam, senior vice president of the Nielsen Media and Advertising analysis Department, said: "Pinterest audiences are the same people who shop online, which is a feature of Pinterest, Radha Shabramanyam. Pinterest viewers will soon shift their interest to trading opportunities. ”

In other words, Pinterest may be sitting on a "potential gold mine", especially Pinterest allowing its users to connect their Facebook accounts to Pinterest files. This means that Pinterest can learn a lot about their users, what their users really like about clothes, furniture, accessories and even food, and understand what they might be interested in buying.

In addition, the Pinterest website is confident of using the site to connect with Facebook. When a user registers the Pinterest Web site, the site automatically "tracks" All of the users ' Facebook friends (who are also on the Pinterest) and sends emails to these friends to remind them that they have registered Pinterest.

Jeff Jordan, partner of the Silicon Valley venture capital company Anderson Hollowitz Fund (Andreessen Horowitz), said the company had huge potential opportunities, in part because Pinterest users ' needs seemed never to be fully met. "The most notable aspect of the site is the extent to which the site is involved, and as long as users use it, users will be ' greedy '," says Jeff Jordan. In this area, Jeff Jordan says, he has only seen a website that uses the same level of user Pinterest as Facebook.

It is reported that Pinterest headquarters located in California State Palo (Palo Alto), the current number of staff of 20 people. Ben Silbermann, founder of the Silberman, said Pinterest also offered an ipad app that should provide another way to grow the site. But Pinterest said it was not in a hurry to find a way to turn the company into a profitable business.

It is reported that Pinterest has attempted to increase revenue by cooperating with skimlinks ancillary market services. If a Pinterest user clicks on a link with Skimlinks, enters the website's online store page and buys a product, Pinterest will have a small income. However, not all users support Pinterest this mode of operation, when found Pinterest use published on the website of the goods to make money, some users feel dissatisfied, which makes Pinterest have to give up with skimlinks cooperation.

In addition, Pinterest encountered other obstacles. For example, some photographers and bloggers have criticized Pinterest for "allowing Pinterest users to share copyright-restricted images without their consent," he said. Silberman, who responded to many of the users ' complaints online, said the company was working to address the above issues, Pinterest "attaches great importance" to copyright, and the company is working to make it possible to report violations. "Every site that has user-generated content needs to think about this, we understand what people are worried about, and we care about that, and we will make this service valuable to users," says Silberman. "(Liu Chunhoshan)

(This source: NetEase Technology Report)