Internet companies are shifting to the mobile end of today

Pinterest was founded in 2009, initially primarily for users to save photos of things they are interested in. A few years later, Pinterest launched the iphone version, August 14, 2012, with both the Android and ipad apps on board. Pinterest staff at that time in a question on a bet, that is Pinterest mobile applications when the flow of traffic over the Web page, is a few weeks, or months?

The answer is August 14, 2012, the same day that the Android version was released. From that day onwards, most of the flow of Pinterest comes from the mobile end. As for the specific figures, Pinterest has never been published. "There is definitely more than half the mobile end," Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp (Evan Sharp) said in an interview at the company's new headquarters. We may be the last large website. As far as I know, we are also one of the last startups to be watched by the web. ”

Sharp was speaking at the end of an hour-long interview, so I don't think there was any marketing intent behind Sharp's remark. The industry has a view that Pinterest may be living in the Web age and the mobile era, Facebook, Tumblr and other internet giants in the transition to the mobile end of the dilemma, and Pandora, Groupon and other Internet companies have encountered similar problems, The two companies in the transition to the mobile end of the process has made greater progress, leading the Instagram and WhatsApp, such as the latest batch of "mobile first" star company.

So I used some external news to refute Sharp's point of view. For example, Pinterest, a market research institute, said that in March this year, the number of users in the United States was 46 million, of which 53% came from the mobile end. Andrew Lipsman, analyst Andrew Lipsman, said he thought some companies might focus on the Web or mobile at the time of creation, but now they have not yet made choices on these two platforms, and there are significant differences in positioning.

Lipsman said: "I personally think that in some of the emerging Internet companies, the desktop side is still the bulk of their traffic, but these companies may from the outset, they have to plan how to survive in a multi-platform environment." John Lilly, Greylock Capital partner at John Lilly, said he might support Sharp's theory. But that doesn't mean the web era is over.

Greylock Capital's local social networking site, Nextdoor, could be another counter case. The site is still small but seeks to cover more people. Nextdoor launched its first iphone app last week. In addition, the short rental website Airbnb and the merger of the two big Food takeaway grubhub/seamless also have their market.

Sharp is currently in charge of Pinterest design and front-end engineering, and he is more interested in developing native applications for touch-screen devices, where people can use touch-screen devices in a variety of environments. Sharp believes that if Pinterest is just created today, then it will be an application: "The industry has a joke, ' Shut down the site! ' Of course we don't, and it helps us focus on these platforms. ”

Sharp may just be a little jealous of the "move First" company, although he uses words like "mobile" to describe smartphones and tablets. "Many companies are trying to keep their applications consistent, but I think the use of different platforms is quite different," says Sharp. He also pointed out that Pinterest hopes to make different versions of its applications more diverse in the future.

Sharp believes that this is a matter of form-the use of tablets requires two hands, and the use of mobile phones often need only one hand-but also a use of the problem: "mobile phone is used to record the daily life of the dribs and drabs." By contrast, Pinterest users tend to use their tablet applications for long periods of the night. ”

"Recipes are an important theme of Pinterest," he added. Users may find recipes on their computers at work, then post them on their own bulletin wall, and when they cook, if they have a lot of equipment around them, they might put the ipad in the kitchen because the recipes are stored. We want to make this process seamless. ”