How Pinterest developed in China

Pinterest has now become one of America's most popular social networks of interest, and its Chinese customers have changed to be a picture-shopping site, because the United States has nearly 900 million users of Facebook, while in China there is more than 800 million of online goods Taobao.

The utilitarian consumerism makes the advocates of cultural and aesthetic sharing become somewhat different from ordinary people.

Who will be the next heir to Facebook? I think the first answer that the tech of Silicon Valley people give is Pinterest. This is a photo-visual social networking site founded in 2011 in the United States. "Pinterest" is a pin (pushpin) +interest (interest) a combination of two words, as the name suggests is to the object of interest in the nail Plate (pinboard). On this site, users set up virtual nail board, paste a variety of interest pictures, trendy dress, dream destination, the design of the heart ... Is such an Internet rookie, in the period of 60 times times the flow of time, fans from the designers and other small crowd of art quickly spread to the vast number of housewives and other social mainstream groups.

Pinterest was founded by Hibberman (Ben Silbermann), a small, mild, 29-year-old Tech "Otaku" who graduated from Yale University. In 2008, he left Google's students to start a business, the development of online shopping mobile applications have failed, allegedly once for his girlfriend to choose an engagement ring, some of the pictures of the favorite ring printed out, affixed to the nail plate repeatedly compared to produce new entrepreneurial inspiration.

From the business model point of view, Pinterest's imaginary space lies in its marketing value to the electric dealer website and the brand Enterprise, thus obtains the corresponding shopping divide and the brand advertisement income. Industry watchers have found from various research data that attractive images have attracted users to Pinterest for a long time, and that they have a chance to shop (or shop online to complete the purchase of photo products) from a picture link to a site like Facebook.

Not long ago, the Japanese electric business website Lotte led the Pinterest a new round of 100 million U.S. dollars of financing, the Pinterest valuation has reached 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, and a year ago this figure of only 40 million U.S. dollars. In some tech blogs and reports, the number of active users has reached tens other Pinterest has been described as the third-largest social networking site after Facebook and Twitter.

The red Pinterest quickly by "Consumer-to-consumer" (Copy to China, copied to the Chinese). In a network community, netizens are collecting "shanzhai" Pinterest Chinese website list, currently has 50 or so, this number is still expanding. In addition to some small entrepreneurs, Taobao, 360, happy net and other large companies have been joined this team.

In different social backgrounds, Chinese imitators show a rich "Chinese characteristics" of the development of ecology.

Backed by Taobao

When people talk about Pinterest websites in China, beauty and Mushroom Street are often mentioned first, and they are the two of the most current traffic on the site, which is quite popular with young girls. But careful observation will find that they and Pinterest are just a "apart" similarity.

Mushroom Street, for example, although it also uses the Pinterest iconic "waterfall Flow" (a picture plus text interactive content staggered display of the page layout), but the user here to see and share the pictures, mainly a variety of clothes, shoes, bags and other goods, These pictures can be linked to Taobao and other electric websites for shopping.

Yan, a partner at the Mushroom Street who worked on Taobao, told Southern Weekend reporters that they had just borrowed from the Pinterest external form of the shopping guide website. Beautiful said founder Xu Yijong also publicly stressed that "we just and Pinterest look like, do things differently."

Mushroom Street, many of the founding team from Taobao, began in 2010 in the network community and E-commerce to combine the direction of entrepreneurship, their initial product is a similar forum structure of the community. If the user from the Mushroom Street link to the Electronic business site browsing and shopping, Mushroom Street can directly obtain a certain commission income. Therefore, how to improve the purchase conversion rate (the number of transaction completion and page access ratio) has been Yan beads and colleagues in the direction of research.

Yan Beads explained that Pinterest emphasized that users collect and share content, but in the mushroom Street to share content in fact, only about 1% of the users, mainly some "with the talent" and Taobao sellers, and Mushroom Street to do, is through shielding spam ads, so that high-quality, conversion rate of the most powerful content presented in the Browsing "The eyes of the user.

Jingwei Venture Investment analyst Zhongminghao Image of this model described as a "market", these paired with the people and Taobao sellers is "stall", and the majority of users are "stroll".

Although and Pinterest is far from comparable, but the venture for a year or two, beautiful said and Mushroom Street has been a strong growth, the current two sites, the number of registered users is 15 million and 10 million respectively.

In Yan bead view, Mushroom Street rapid growth is not only because of a piece of Pinterest vest, more important behind a 800 million of online products Taobao can be excavated, and Mushroom street and beautiful said the main female apparel category is Taobao's largest category of products.

In Zhongminghao view, Taobao six or seven years of painstaking development, the establishment of a huge network shopping platform, but also to cultivate the Chinese young users of the internet shopping habits, build a network payment platform and commission into an open platform, and so on, which constitute a perfect electrical business system, is beautiful and mushroom street This kind of shopping guide website can quickly grow up an important background.

Although from the Alexa ranking data, these two sites are currently ranked in the Chinese web site is still 100, but the existing mechanism of the Commission of Electricity dealers plus a small amount of advertising revenue, has made them early into the founders of the envy of the "make money" that dial. Li Huizhu said that at present Mushroom Street Daily commission income has reached 130,000-150,000 yuan, and also in the monthly growth rate of about 10%.

Zhongminghao China's Pinterest companies into two major categories, one is beautiful said, Mushroom Street This kind of commodity picture-sharing, with the electric business website closely related "snobbish" category, the second is closer to the positioning of the Pinterest itself, more emphasis on the sharing of interest "not so snobbish" category.

Alibaba after the resignation of the founder of the Zhang Yi of sugar nets belong to the latter, she noted that many users in the use of Watercress albums, not upload photos, but in the store a lot of their favorite pictures. This coincides with the discovery of another entrepreneur, Liu Pingyang, who started a Flickr-like online album store site A few years ago, and he and his colleagues also found that many users used the site to collect pictures rather than photos, and their sample results showed that the ratio was as high as 40%.

2010 Zhang Yi Team's first version of the product line, the name is "sharing found good dongdong", the user uploaded "a picture plus a sentence description", was neatly arranged on the page, form a bit like a separate watercress album. But Zhang Yi has been feeling this form can not very well reflect the user interaction on the page, and then inspired by the Pinterest, Zhang Yi to the original product was revised, as now the heap sugar network.

Liu Pingyangbi Zhang Yi started a bit later, he first tried on the internet to learn from the Pinterest page layout to launch a new product, by the end of 2011 to launch an independent web site petals, the site is now widely regarded as China's "most like Pinterest" site.

Zhang Yi remembers that the idea of interest picture sharing, Pinterest not the "first Crab Eater", was a big step in leveraging Facebook, a social platform that is maturing and now has nearly 900 million users. Facebook has been the Pinterest's biggest source of visitors and destination.

To Zhang Yi Some melancholy, China does not have such a eminence platform, people's network of social relations dispersed in micro-bo, QQ, Renren, net, watercress and other communities, "This brings us a lot of trouble, we must pay more time and energy, to docking a variety of platforms."

In addition to them, walking in this direction of entrepreneurs still have fans, found, topit.me and other teams, or even 360, happy net and Taobao, has also launched such interest mapping products.

However, the concept of the interest map has not yet been recognized by so many Chinese internet users, and journalists have investigated dozens of young women who meet the target audience of the Pinterest category, most of whom know nothing about such sites.

It commentators Xie that this is related to the low level of internet development in China, the shopping guide site more with the "pragmatic" reality, and the interest map category is a "way of life spread." According to Zhongminghao observation, currently active in this type of site users constitute, mainly some "urban literary youth."

Controversy over the wind-pitching circle

Pinterest's popularity is short, and its own sustainability is controversial.

Chinaventure analyst Feng Po that only the sharing of interest pictures can not keep the user stickiness for a long time, once a new application model appears, users may be large-scale transfer, if you can not rely on existing users to build a good platform, the future will soon face the ceiling, or even decline.

Based on a similar judgment, Zhu Yuhu, a partner at Jinsha Venture, said he had given up on the subject after a certain understanding of Pinterest.

According to the data from the visit, the recent two or three months, the growth of Pinterest has seen a slowdown and even volatility.

But the question is not enough to shake the capital's pursuit of it. People enthusiastically give higher valuations.

In China, the class Pinterest website, regardless of the shopping guide category or the Interest Atlas class, are quite subject to the venture capital favor: Beautiful said has completed the tricycle financing, from the Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital and so on venture capitalist organization to obtain tens of millions of dollar investment, Mushroom Street also from Bertelsmann, Qiming VC introduced two rounds of 20 million U.S. dollars in venture capital, petals on line five days, it won the first round of the millions of investment, the pile of sugar also got Baidu founder of one of Wang Yu Angel Investment ...

In stark contrast, another popular photo-sharing mobile app, Instagram, was bought by Facebook more than 1 billion dollars in 2011, and its Chinese "imitation customers" are basically living a dismal life.

In fact, although it looks like a good situation, but whether it is "snobbish" or "not so snobbish" Pinterest of the Chinese imitation guests, are also facing some controversy.

Beautiful say, mushroom street This kind of picture buys a website, the current income basically relies on from Taobao's commission to divide, Taobao only needs to adjust the rules of the game, to this kind of website may be the test of survival.

Taobao company claimed that "must comply with the trend of sharing", but also developed a series of such products, the name of the stubborn rabbit, wow, love shopping, and so on, although the current operation is not ideal, but to a certain extent and beautiful said with Mushroom Street in a competitive position. The spread of Taobao blocked beauty, mushroom street gossip, and sometimes mergers and acquisitions, in this, Taobao to the South Weekend reporter's interview email reply is: it can be clearly said that Taobao is not currently buying mushroom street ideas and actions.

"We also hope that the flow can be more dispersed to the major electric dealers, but there is no way, Taobao is huge." The Yan bead smiles to say. In the sense of hardship, they are seeking to get more brand advertising.

and interest map type website, potential user scale is bigger, but need time precipitation, thick accumulate thin hair slowly grow. Liu Pingyang to the southern weekend reporters that Pinterest is a culture and aesthetic sharing, operators need to sink down to slowly explore the "localization of user needs."

A VC who has researched the pile of sugar told reporters that heap Sugar founder, Pinterest is not yet known to the people, initially she optimistic about the "idea" of the team and entrepreneurial direction, but in Pinterest burst red and imitation, "for the heap of sugar, not see there is plenty of time to slowly cultivate the community, very unfortunate ”。