The number of Pinterest users exceeded the 10 million mark in January this year

Foreign media published an analysis of the article said that the Picture sharing social networking site Pinterest users in January this year exceeded the 10 million mark, traffic in six months increased 10 times times, but Pinterest can not convert traffic to revenue. Making Pinterest profitable would be one of the major challenges facing the company. The following is a summary of the article content:

If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you'll soon hear about this site. In the past 6 months, the flow of Pinterest has increased 10 times times. In January this year, Pinterest's visit amounted to almost one-third of Twitter's. But the venture also faces a conundrum of not knowing how to profit from the flow. But an innovative company with only 16 employees faces a problem: it is not clear how it will generate revenue.

"Jeremy's profitability strategy has not yet been released, even far from the baking table," said Bessemer Venture, venture capital Pinterest, a member of the board of Directors of the company. We have 100 ideas, but we have not yet implemented one of them. ”

Pinterest is not unusual for any internet innovation company, and some even call it a guild. Previously, both Facebook and Twitter had made rapid progress without a business model at first. Ben Silbermann, co-founder of Pinterest, said he was pursuing the same trajectory but would worry about the details in the future Ben Silberman.

The 29-year-old former Google employee said: "My hope is that if we create a service that makes it easier for many people to find something, then the service will be of real value." "Silberman started Cold Brew Labs Inc. in 2008 and launched the company's only one by one products Pinterest the following year. Currently, Pinterest has been from Silicon Valley angel investors, including Yelp game Executive Jeremy Stopelman (Jeremy Stoppelman), and Bessemer, Anderson Hollowitz (Andreessen Horowitz) and other venture capital companies to raise 37.5 million of dollars in cash.

Pinterest does not currently disclose financial information, but it is certain that the company's current revenue is still not profitable. Sources said Pinterest's current valuation is about $200 million trillion.

Since social networking sites usually have free policies for users, the prospect of making money is a challenge. So far, analysts have offered Pinterest commercial solutions that revolve around precision ad sales and user personal data, but they are immature and may alienate users-a problem for social networking giants such as Facebook.

Pinterest website screenshot (Tencent Science and Technology match map)

User surge

But users are flocking to Pinterest. According to comscore, the Internet traffic monitoring agency, Pinterest has exceeded 11 million per cent of its independent visitors this January, up more than 4.9 million from last November. Pinterest users spent more than 100 minutes on the site this January, far more than 19 minutes spent on social networking sites LinkedIn, comscore stressed. Andrew Lipsman, analyst at ComScore, said, "I have not found any other independent web sites that can reach 10 million users in the short term like Pinterest Andrew Lipsman." ”

68% of Pinterest users are women, many of them living in the Midwest, according to comscore. Pinterest users must currently have an invitation to join.

American retailers are seeking a slice of the current Pinterest popularity. Neiman Marcus Group's upscale department store Bergdorf Goodman, has started to attract Pinterest users ' attention to its high-end clothing. Sears Holdings's outdoor sports brand Lands ' End canvas last month added a new icon to its product page to make it easier for visitors to forward their favorite style images to their Pinterest personal home page.

Handicrafts Trading website Etsy.com, currently Pinterest followers have reached 50600 people, and are using the Pinterest price display function. This means that when a Pinterest user "pushes" the Etsy chair in the information release console, the picture of the Chair automatically contains its name and the banner that displays the price.

Create value

Pinterest's services did create value for some small businesses. "Our traffic has been converted into revenue," said Amy Squires, co-founder of the Wedding chicks, the wedding gift retail website. "The site's revenue in 2011 was about $540,000 trillion, up from 340,000 in 2010." The wedding chicks only joined Pinterest last summer, saying that Pinterest contributed twice times more traffic to the site each month than Facebook and Twitter.

Neil Blumenthal, Nier Brumansar of Warby Parker, the glasses retail website, said the number of visitors to the company's Web site directly from Pinterest had increased four times times over the past four months. "Pinterest allows us to sell our products in an organized and more reliable way," he said. ”

Like Google's YouTube and other users to generate content sites, Pinterest also has to deal with copyright images and other content issues related to the policy. Under these policies, content owners can report violations of their copyright to Pinterest, and if so, Pinterest delete them immediately. Pinterest said the copyright issue "has so far been negligible." ”

In recent days, however, Pinterest has been criticized for not disclosing its approach to affiliate marketing (affiliate marketing). Affiliate marketing is a common form of online advertising that allows businesses to embed links to their online stores and provide them with sales. But Pinterest and its venture capitalists say affiliate marketing is not an important part of the Pinterest business model at the moment.

Others worry that Pinterest's terms of use are broad enough to give it the right to "sell" and "modify" membership, potentially bringing privacy issues to Pinterest in the future.

But these do not prevent the New York gift retail website Uncommongoods from using Pinterest services. David Bolotsky, founder of Uncommongoods, said Uncommongoods David Polotski last October that its website traffic came from Pinterest, and since then began to use it.

In recent weeks, Polotski said, the Uncommongoods Web site has been growing in Pinterest traffic, and has even matched the traffic from Facebook. "The overlap between Pinterest users and our users is perfect," he said. "Near the logo of the company's Twitter and Facebook page links, Uncommongoods recently added a new icon that reads:" Please come Pinterest to me. ”