Pinterest is one of the worst things to happen to my search experience in the last decade.<p>I've started wondering if they're using something like StyleGAN to general endless image variations that exist nowhere else (and have no source or context on pintrest) in order to pollute google image results.
I am genuinely curious, how does the year-over-year growth of 60% come together with the pretty consistent "death curve" according to Google Trends [0]. Could they have deliberately lowered the revenue in 2017 through some clever accounting in order to come up with this number? As they have been around since ~2012, are there any prior financial metrics publicly available?<p>[0] <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=pinterest" rel="nofollow">https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...</a>
If I'm reading their MAU charts correctly, they have way more MAU outside of the US than inside (82m vs 184m last quarter), not only that but international user growth is relatively strong compared to the US. That said, 94% of revenue last quarter was from the US, so they are not monetizing internationally really at all. If they can improve international monetization then there is a lot of room for revenue growth it would seem.
<i>We depend in part on internet search engines, such as Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex, to direct a significant amount of traffic to our service. For example, when a user types a query into a search engine, we may receive traffic and acquire new users when those search results include Pins, boards, Pinners and other features of our service that cause the user to click on the Pinterest result or create a Pinterest account. These actions increase Pinner growth due to signups of new users and increase retention and engagement of existing Pinners.<p>Our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our service from search engines is not within our control. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, that we are not able to predict or without prior notice. When that occurs, we expect to experience declines or de-indexing in the organic search ranking of certain Pinterest search results, leading to a decrease in traffic to our service, new user signups and existing user retention and engagement. We have experienced declines in traffic and user growth as a result of these changes in the past, and anticipate fluctuations as a result of such actions in the future. For example, in the first quarter of 2018, Google de-indexed our keyword landing pages, which negatively impacted traffic and user growth in the quarters that followed. Our ability to appeal these actions is limited, and we may not be able to revise our search engine optimization (“SEO”) strategies to recover the loss in traffic or user growth resulting from such actions. Changes in policies or their enforcement may not apply in the same manner to our competitors, or our competitors’ SEO strategies may be more successful than ours.</i><p>Seems like a horrible business to invest in when you're so utterly at the whim of someone else you have no control over.
Pinterest continuing the trend of teach companies IPOing with dual class share structures:<p>"Following this offering, we will have two classes of common stock: Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights of the holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock will be identical, except with respect to voting, conversion and transfer rights. Each share of Class A common stock will be entitled to one vote. Each share of Class B common stock will be entitled to 20 votes and will be convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock."
"For the year ended December 31, 2018, we generated revenue of $755.9 million, as compared to $472.9 million for the same period in 2017, representing year-over-year growth of 60%. For the year ended December 31, 2018, we generated a net loss of $63.0 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(39.0) million, as compared to a net loss of $130.0 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(93.0) million, respectively, in the same period in 2017"
For those who don't seem to understand what Pinterest is aside from appearing on search results in Google, it's essentially a more photo-centric version of sub-reddits. If you're not into arts, crafts, design, or curating things, you probably wouldn't really use it.
I hate what Pinterest does to google image searching. Sometimes I really just want to paste an image src in an online discussion without having to drill into devtools.
There is something junky about Pinterest and Quora— the experience of using it while not logged in is bad. Facebook has users in a strangle hold— afraid of alienating and being out of the loop on family affairs if they leave. Can someone convince me that Pinterest is not suceptible to an overnight diaspora if another service becomes more useful or fashionable? It’s great that Pinterest is making money but how will they defend themselves? If not, perhaps Pinterest would be a good long term short?
> As of December 31, 2018, we had 1,797 full-time employees, an increase of 32% compared to December 31, 2017.<p>Why do you need so many people? A breakdown for each department would be interesting
Does pinterest count impressions from google images as active/distinct user? Wouldn't surprise me if they did that atrocious image search seo to juice up the MAU numbers. I probably live in a bubble but nobody I know uses pinterest.
smart, taking money off the market when there's still money on the market. that's the fourth notable S-1 in a month or so. if smart money cashing out doesn't signal that there's real volatility ahead, I don't know what else would.
It's weird how HN has become so negative about every recent tech companies IPO. You would think this would be the one place on the internet where people would be excited and positive about this sort of thing. I don't get it, is it jealousy about missing the boat?
"We have incurred operating losses in the past, anticipate increasing our operating expenses, expect to incur operating losses in the future and may never achieve or maintain profitability."<p>Says it all, really.
"We currently depend on the continued services and performance of our key personnel, including Benjamin Silbermann and others. Mr. Silbermann’s employment, and the employment of our other key personnel, is at will, which means they may resign or be terminated for any reason at any time."<p>Genuine question: is it normal for <i>the CEO</i> of a company in the US to have no notice period?
Is there like an S-1 team that does graphic design for everyone's S-1 these days? Lyft's S-1 has the same designs: pages of pictures of happy people/drivers, a full page mission statement in a sans-serif font on a solid background of color, similar page with numbers on it...
How does tech IPOs even with very poor outlook and no potential to become big actually go through anyway? I can't imagine myself buying stock of many recent filings but apparently tech IPOs seems to be rarely failing even though many seem to be designed purely as VC escape hatch. So who really buys all these stock?