Pinterest Company History Timeline
The earliest versions of Pinterest were pretty rudimentary, and development of the site began in earnest in December 2009.
Cold Brew Labs’ first real product was a shopping comparison app called Tote, which launched in 2009 roughly six months after Cold Brew Labs was founded.
Silbermann and Sciarra’s new prototype was largely finished by the end of the autumn of 2009.
By December 2010, Pinterest had grown into 10,000 users.
Early in 2010 Ben and the investors in the company decided to sell the network to a magazine publishing company based in New York; the company declined.
The notion of online pinboards was still novel in 2010, but people already knew how to use a pinboard.
The launch of an iPhone app in early March 2011 brought in more downloads than expected.
On August 10, 2011, Time magazine listed Pinterest in its "50 Best Websites of 2011" article.
Pinterest won the Best New Startup of 2011 at the TechCrunch Crunchies Awards.
Silbermann and a few programmers operated the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011.
For January 2012, comScore reported the site had 11.7 million unique United States visitors
On March 23, 2012, Pinterest unveiled updated terms of service that eliminated the policy that gave it the right to sell its users' content.
On August 10, 2012, Pinterest altered their policy so that a request or an invitation was no longer required to join the site.
On September 20, 2012 Pinterest announced the hiring of its new head of engineering, Jon Jenkins.
In October 2012, Pinterest launched business accounts allowing businesses to either convert their existing personal accounts into business accounts or start from scratch.
Paul left Pinterest in 2012 and, today, he's working on new projects in technology.
At the 2012 Webby Awards, Pinterest won Best Social Media App and People's Voice Award for best functioning visual design.
Earlier this year, Silbermann gave the keynote speech at the Alt Summit 2012 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In February 2013, Reuters and ComScore stated that Pinterest had 48.7 million users globally.
Pinterest kicked off 2013 with a bang by raising even more funding.
2013 also saw the introduction of what was the biggest update to Pinterest as a product thus far: Promoted Pins.
In 2014, Pinterest generated its first revenue
Aside from serving as an example of just how influential Pinterest was in 2014, Guided Search was a major step forward for Pinterest as a content discovery engine.
On April 1, 2015, Pinterest launched its Jumpstart program, an experimental initiative designed to help the company break into overseas markets more effectively.
The company’s Buyable Pins and Marketing Developer Partners program were both rolled out in 2015, but Pinterest wasted precious time by rolling these features out very slowly.
It was the second-largest source of referral traffic on the internet after Facebook. It had more than 100M users worldwide and Pinterest’s international user growth increased by more than 135% in 2015.
In October 2016, Pinterest announced 150 million monthly active users, 70 million in the United States and 80 million outside the United States
By the time Pinterest introduced support for video and built its own native video player in 2016, Facebook had been enjoying strong revenue growth from its video ads for two years.
Look familiar? That’s because Google Images introduced the exact same feature into its search function in 2017—three years after Pinterest pioneered the idea.
In 2017, Pinterest partnered with Target on a pilot program in which Pinterest users could take pictures of merchandise in Target stores, and Lens would offer suggestions for visually and thematically similar items on Pinterest.
Revenue grew by 58% in 2017, softening the blow of its missed revenue target.
By 2018, just eight years after Silbermann, Sharp, and Sciarra first unveiled their prototype, Pinterest had become a social behemoth.
The company still has to figure out how to compete with Google and Facebook’s stranglehold over the online ad space, but signs are pointing to an IPO in mid-2019, based on strong revenue growth and advertisers’ attraction to its search technology on mobile.
On October 20, 2021, Bloomberg reported that PayPal is interested in acquiring Pinterest, with a potential price of around $70 a share.
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Pinterest Similar Companies
| Company Name | Founded Date | Revenue | Employee Size | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $3.0B | 15,000 | 47 | |
| Tumblr | 2007 | $84.0M | 2,437 | - |
| 1998 | $257.6B | 139,995 | 1,348 | |
| Meta | 2004 | $86.0B | 71,970 | 7,574 |
| Yammer | 2008 | $50.0M | 85 | - |
| Airbnb | 2008 | $6.0B | 5,597 | 24 |
| Uber Technologies | 2009 | $17.5B | 22,800 | - |
| Automattic | 2005 | $88.0M | 1,792 | - |
| Yelp | 2004 | $1.0B | 3,900 | 73 |
| eBay | 1995 | $10.4B | 13,300 | 155 |
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