I've been a fan of Pinterest for a long time, though I rarely use it these days.<p>I've been fascinated, and slightly horrified, by their pivot away from social functionality and towards a vision of a neutral bookmarking site.<p>It's not that I'd want Pinterest to be more social in and as an end itself, but rather because I think it better incentivizes people to create good quality content, and it makes it easier to discover things I want to find.<p>There's very little ROI for cultivating a public image on Pinterest, so few people put much effort into doing it. At the same time, people who have taste similar to mine are a much better way to find things than any algorithm Pinterest has ever released. And yet, they keep emphasizing algorithmic recommendations while disincentivizing people from publicly expressing their taste and making it harder for me to follow people I like.<p>And then there are the ads, which, as a bunch of other commenters have pointed out, tend to be really far out of line from anything I've ever expressed interest in. It's just off-putting to see a bunch of low-quality ads for tacky crap in the middle of my feed of minimalist interiors.<p>Maybe they have something up their sleeves, or maybe I'm very different from their target user. Otherwise I just don't agree with their product direction.
I just started looking at Pinterest as a company to work for. From the outside, the way they treat their employees looks amazing. Things like KnitCon (an internal conference for employees led by employees) reflect well on the company.
On the other hand, some of the reviews on Glassdoor are not so kind.<p>I hope Pinterest can succeed and overcome its current challenges. Even if I do not ever get a job there, what is good for one company lifts everyone else in our industry (unless you are a direct competitor!)
I've started to use pintrest a lot lately (finding ideas for some DIY furniture). I actually kind of like the product for discovery. I haven't pinned items from other sites, just saved items from other people's boards.<p>My biggest qualm is the number of low quality ads. Ton of stuff for diet drinks, teeth whitening, skin cream and the like. And fidget spinners, lots of fidget spinning ads. Perhaps I haven't used the app enough to get more personalized ads, but I do hope the side of the service improves.
Pinterest really dropped the ball, they could have been a super profitable social network.<p>A lot has been written about how people go on Pinterest with shopping intent. It's a way to window shop the entire internet, curated by friends. They never really monetized it much though. Individual influencers made money by leveraging referral programs.<p>It seems like Pinterest was way ahead of the curve when it came to having image-heavy content and a heavy focus on lifestyle products. But they missed the boat on video and a lot of the influencers moved to Instagram or Facebook.
The thing that really puts me off Pinterest is that they require you to log in to see their public pages.<p>I'm surprised that people would throw another $150M on this particular bonfire. Like so many other bookmarking sites before it, Pinterest is overreaching. Their best outcome (for investors, not users) is likely an acquisition by Facebook.
Twitter is currently trading for $12.7 billion. They did $2.5 billion in sales last year.<p>Pinterest has a: show me the sales, problem, I suspect. Public comparables in social like Twitter & Snapchat are going to cap their upside until or unless Pinterest can somehow demonstrate a very profitable business model. If those margins never arrive, Pinterest is going to be worth something a lot closer to Yelp than Twitter. From $12 billion, there's a massive downside risk in the last few rounds for Pinterest investors if this gets a similar reality chopping to what Twitter & Snap have.
I'm shocked how Pintrest gets away with spamming Google images with dead end links to sign up forms as an on-boarding mechanism.<p>I search images these days and I click a result only to be thrown into a Pintrest on-boarding flow and unable to get the image I wanted.<p>Honestly think they should be banned from Image Search results.
I was one of their biggest supporters until they set up a registration wall and increased their targeting outside the site.<p>I thought one of the best use cases was as a wishlist, but that's not gonna work with a registration wall.
When aliens deign to view us they will see a society which has recently taken the fetish of (targeted) advertising to new heights, possibly above the actual production of products and services which to advertise.