WHAT IS PINTEREST? (In the Entertainment industry.)

Pinterest Logo / Photo Credit: Pinterest - Michael Deal and Juan Carlos Pagan

WHAT IS PINTEREST? (In the Entertainment industry.)         

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WHAT IS PINTEREST?

https://www.pinterest.com/

How does Instagram work?

Pinterest, Inc. is a social media web and mobile application company. The social network allows users to visually share, and discover new interests by posting (known as 'pinning' on Pinterest) images or videos to their own or others' boards (i.e. a collection of 'pins,' usually with a common theme) and browsing what other users have pinned. It operates a software system designed to enable discovery of information on the World Wide Web using images and, on a smaller scale, GIFs and videos. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. Pinterest has reached 250 million monthly active users as of October 2018.

Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pin boards.

Content can also be found outside Pinterest and similarly uploaded to a board via the "Pin It" button, which can be downloaded to the bookmark bar on a web browser, or be implemented by a webmaster directly on the website.

Some websites include red and white "pin it" buttons on items, which allow Pinterest users to pin them directly. In 2015, Pinterest implemented a feature that allows users to search with images instead of words.

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann summarized the company as a "catalogue of ideas" that inspires users to "go out and do that thing", rather than as an image-based social network.

Pins

A Pin is an image that has been linked from a website or uploaded. Pins saved from one user's board can be saved to someone else's board, a process known as "repinning." In 2016, Pinterest renamed the "Pin it" button to "Save." The purpose behind the renaming was due to international expansion, making the site more intuitive to new users. In October 2013, Pinterest began displaying advertisements in the form of “Promoted Pins.” Promoted Pins are based on an individual user's interests, things done on Pinterest, or a result of visiting an advertiser's site or app.

Boards

Boards are collections of pins dedicated to a theme such as quotations, travel, or weddings.

Exploring

Pinterest uses a feature called Guided Search, which gives keyword suggestions when entering a search term, narrowing down results. The home feed is a collection of Pins from the users, boards, and topics followed, as well as a few Promoted Pins and Pins Pinterest has picked. On the main Pinterest page, a "pin feed" appears, displaying the chronological activity from the Pinterest boards that a user follows.

In recent months, Pinterest introduced visual search as part of their latest feature. This search feature allows users to take a photo of existing pins, zoom into existing parts of a photo or take new photos. Then, users could click into any of the assigned circles and multiple suggestions will pop up in the guided search below the photo. If the item is in Pinterest's database, it will direct the user to the shop or pins that are similar. This feature incorporates the guided search feature as it gives keyword suggestions and narrowing down the results for the photo.

Following

Following users and boards fills the home feed with content. Users can follow and unfollow users as well as boards. Similar to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Pinterest contains verified accounts. A verified account will contain a checkmark next to their domain in the search results. The verified profile will also contain a full website URL and checkmark.

History

2009–2011: Founding

Development of Pinterest began in December 2009, and the site launched as a closed beta in March 2010. The site proceeded to operate in an invitation-only open beta. Pinterest allows users to save images and categorize them on different boards. They can follow other users' boards if they have similar tastes. The evolution of Pinterest is based on the shared interest of its users and relies on its members to produce the content. The most popular categories, as of March 2012, were home, arts and crafts, style/fashion, and food. Silbermann said he personally wrote to the site's first 5,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users.

Silbermann and a few programmers operated the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011. Early in 2010, the company's investors and co-founder Ben Silbermann tried to encourage a New York-based magazine publishing company to buy Pinterest but the publisher declined to meet with the founders.

Nine months after the launch the website had 10,000 users. The launch of an iPhone app in early March 2011, brought in a more than expected number of downloads. The app would later be updated in March 2013. The Pinterest iPad app was launched August 2011. Pinterest Mobile, launched the following month, is a version of the website for non-iPhone users.

On August 10, 2011, Time magazine listed Pinterest in its "50 Best Websites of 2011" article. In December 2011, the site became one of the top 10 largest social network services, according to Hitwise data, with 11 million total visits per week. The next month, it drove more referral traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+. The same month, the company was named the best new startup of 2011 by TechCrunch. Noted entrepreneurs and investors include: Jack Abraham, Michael Birch, Scott Belsky, Brian Cohen, Shana Fisher, Ron Conway, FirstMark Capital, Kevin Hartz, Jeremy Stoppelman, Hank Vigil, and Fritz Lanman.

Initially, there were several ways to register a new Pinterest account. Potential users could either receive an invitation from an already registered friend, or they could request an invitation directly from the Pinterest website that could take some time to receive. An account can also be created and accessed by linking Pinterest to a Facebook or Twitter profile. When a user re-posts or re-pins an image to their own board, they have the option of notifying their Facebook and Twitter followers. This feature can be managed on the settings page.

2012–2018: Growth

For January 2012, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique U.S. visitors, making it the fastest site ever to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark. comScore recorded a unique users moving average growth of 85% from mid-January to mid-February and a 17% growth from mid-February to mid-March. At the South by Southwest Interactive conference in March 2012, Silbermann announced revamped profile pages were being developed and would be implemented soon. On 23 March 2012, Pinterest unveiled updated terms of service that eliminated the policy that gave it the right to sell its users' content. The terms would go into effect April 6. According to Experian Hitwise, the site became the third largest social network in the United States in March 2012, behind Facebook and Twitter.

Co-founder Paul Sciarra left his position at Pinterest in April 2012 for a consulting job as entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz. On 17 May 2012, Japanese electronic commerce company Rakuten announced it was leading a $100 million investment in Pinterest, alongside investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, based on a valuation of $1.5 billion.

On August 10, 2012, Pinterest altered their policy so that a request or an invitation was no longer required to join the site. In addition, the Pinterest app for Android and iPad was also launched on August 14, 2012. On September 20, 2012 Pinterest announced the hiring of its new head of engineering, Jon Jenkins. Jenkins came from Amazon, where he spent eight years as an engineering lead and was also a director of developer tools, platform analysis and website platform.

In October 2012, Pinterest announced a new feature that would allow users to report others for negative and offensive activity or block other users if they do not want to view their content. Pinterest said they want to keep their community "positive and respectful." Also in October, Pinterest launched business accounts allowing businesses to either convert their existing personal accounts into business accounts, or start from scratch.

Much of the service's early user base consisted of infrequent contributors. The site's user growth, which slowed in March 2012, could pick up as the site's user base solidifies around dedicated users according to a comScore representative. In August 2012, Pinterest overtook competing micro-blogging site Tumblr for the first time in terms of unique monthly visitors, clocking in at just under 25 million.

In February 2013, Reuters and ComScore stated that Pinterest had 48.7 million users globally. A study released in July 2013 by French social media agency Semiocast revealed the website had 70 million users worldwide.

In 2014, Pinterest generated its first revenue, when it began charging advertisers to promote their wares to the site's millions of hobbyists, vacation planners, and do-it-yourselfers. Ads on the site could generate as much as $500 million in 2016, estimates Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.

In October 2016, Pinterest announced 150 million monthly active users, 70 million in the U.S. and 80 million outside the U.S. Then in April 2017, they announced 175 million monthly active users, with 3x year over year growth in Germany and Brazil and 2x year over year growth in France and Japan.

In June 2017, Pinterest raised $150 million from a group of existing investors.

In September 2018, Pinterest announced that it had 250 million monthly active users, with most new growth coming from outside the United States of America.

2013–2017: Acquisitions

In March 2013, Pinterest acquired Livestar. Terms were not disclosed. In early October 2013, Pinterest acquired Hackermeter. The company's co-founders, Lucas Baker and Frost Li, joined Pinterest as engineers.

In late October 2013, Pinterest secured a $225 million round of equity funding that valued the website at $3.8 billion.

In April 2015, Pinterest acquired the team from Hike Labs, which had been developing a mobile publishing application called Drafty.

In June 2015, Pinterest unveiled "buyable pins". Rich Pins – pins which have more information than a normal link – will get a new button that allows users to purchase things directly from partners that it's working for. Users will see prices, be able to select specific types of a product (like the color), and then they can tap the button to buy the product. The item will arrive at the user's door.

In December 2015, Pinterest launched a new way for users to monitor price drops on buyable pins. "When users save pins, they’ll get a heads up when a price drops in the form of an in-app notification and an email. They can then jump straight to that pin and make the purchase."

In August 2016, Pinterest launched a video player that lets users and brands upload and store clips of any length straight to the site. On August 23, 2016, Pinterest announced that it would be acquiring the team behind Instapaper, which will continue operating as a separate app. The Instapaper team will both work on the core Pinterest experience and updating Instapaper. On March 8, 2017, Pinterest said it had acquired Jelly Industries, a small search-engine company founded by Biz Stone.

In February 2019, Wall Street Journal stated that Pinterest secretly filed for IPO. The total valuation of the company at the time reached $12 billion.

Business

Pinterest was first conceptualized in December 2009 by cofounders Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra. The first prototype was launched in March 2010 and made available to a small group of colleagues and family members. Since its inception, it has developed into a well-funded site financially supported by a group of successful entrepreneurs and investors including FirstMark Capital, Jack Abraham (Milo), Michael Birch (Bebo), Scott Belsky (Behance), Shana Fisher (Highline Venture Partners), Ron Conway (SV Angel), Kevin Hartz (EventBrite), Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp), Hank Vigil, Fritz Lanman, and Brian S. Cohen.

In early 2011, the company secured a US$10 million Series A financing led by Jeremy Levine and Sarah Tavel of Bessemer Venture Partners. In October 2011, after an introduction from Kevin Hartz and Jeremy Stoppelman, the company secured US$27 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, which valued the company at US$200 million.

Retail companies use Pinterest for advertising and style trending. Pinterest intends web design to support "style conscious retailers", where customers can visualize products within a consumer context. Companies like The Gap, Chobani, Nordstrom, and West Elm use Pinterest to gather online referrals that link users with similar interests to a company. The Gap has arguably taken the biggest initiative in their use of Pinterest, employing their own themed pin boards such as "Denim Icons" and "Everybody in Gap."

Pinterest played a role in the run-up to the 2012 US presidential election. The wives of both candidates created accounts. Ann Romney debuted her Pinterest account in March and First Lady Michelle Obama announced hers in June.

In May 2012, Pinterest was valued at $1.5 billion. In February 2013, it was valued at $2.5 billion. In October 2013, it was valued at $3.8 billion. In May 2014, it was valued at $5 billion. In June 2015, it was valued at $11 billion. In May 2015, Fortune Magazine listed Pinterest in the 8th position on its Unicorn List, which ranks startups that have a valuation exceeding $1 billion. As of 2017 the company is valued at $12 billion.

In June 2015, Pinterest added the "Buy" button to its mobile app.

In Alex Heath's article on Business Insider, he sheds a light to Pinterest's interest in becoming a search company, hence, “the company is putting search front and center in its app with [Pinterest Lens].”

In March 2019, Pinterest added product catalogs and personalized shopping recommendations with the "more from [brand]" option, showcasing a range of product Pins from the same business.

Copyrighted content

Pinterest has a notification system that copyright holders can use to request that content be removed from the site. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor status of Pinterest has been questioned given that it actively promotes its users to copy to Pinterest, for their perpetual use, any image on the Internet. Pinterest users cannot claim safe harbor status and as such are exposed to possible legal action for pinning copyright material. Pinterest allows users to transfer information, intellectual property rights come to play.

A "nopin" HTML Meta tag was released by Pinterest on 20 February 2012 to allow websites to opt out of their images being pinned. On 24 February 2012, Flickr implemented the code to allow users to opt out.

Pinterest released a statement in March 2012 saying it believed it was protected by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions.

In early May 2012, the site added automatic attribution of authors on images originating from Flickr, Behance, YouTube and Vimeo. Automatic attribution was also added for Pins from sites mirroring content on Flickr. At the same time, Flickr added a Pin shortcut to its share option menu to users who have not opted out of sharing their images.

Sources, References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, WikiBooks, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, Film Daily, New York Film Academy, The Balance, Careers Hub, The Numbers, Film Maker, TV Guide Magazine, Blurb, Media Match, Quora, Creative Skill Set, Chron, Investopedia, Variety, No Film School, WGA, BBC, Daily Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample Resume, How Stuff Works, Studio Binder, Career Trend, Producer's Code of Credits, Truity, Production Hub, Producers Guild of America, Film Connection, Variety, Wolf Crow, Get In Media, Production Beast, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, UCAS, Frankenbite, Realty 101, Careers Hub, Screen Play Scripts, Elements of Cinema, Script Doctor, ASCAP, Film Independent, Any Possibility, CTLsites, NYFA, Future Learn, VOM Productions, Mad Studios, DP School, DGA, IATSE, ASC, MPAA, HFPA, MPSE, CDG, AFI, Box Office Mojo, Rotten Tomatoes, The Numbers, Netflix, Vimeo, Instagram, Pinterest,

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Pinterest Logo / Photo Credit: Pinterest - Michael Deal and Juan Carlos Pagan