Pinterest is an American
image sharing
Image sharing, or photo sharing, is the publishing or transfer of digital photos online. Image sharing websites offer services such as uploading, hosting, managing and sharing of photos (publicly or privately). This function is provided through ...
and
social media service
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social media ...
designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of
pinboards. The site was created by
Ben Silbermann
Ben Silbermann (born July 14, 1982) is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Pinterest, a visual discovery engine. which lets users organize images, links, recipes and other things.
Early life
Silberm ...
,
Paul Sciarra
Paul Sciarra (born c. 1981) is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Pinterest.
Early life
Sciarra was born circa 1981. He graduated from Yale University.
Career
Sciarra worked at venture capital firm Radius Ventures, LLC. I ...
, and
Evan Sharp
Evan Sharp (born 1982) is an American billionaire Internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and chief design and creative officer of Pinterest, a visual discovery engine. He joined the company's board of directors in March 2019.
Early life
Sha ...
, and had 433 million
global monthly active users as of July 2022. It is operated by Pinterest, Inc., based in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
.
History
The idea for ''Pinterest'' emerged from an earlier app created by Ben Silberman and Paul Sciarra called Tote which served as a virtual replacement for paper catalogs. Tote struggled as a business, significantly due to difficulties with mobile payments. At the time, mobile payment technology was not sophisticated enough to enable easy on-the-go transactions, inhibiting users from making many purchases via the app. Tote users were, however, amassing large collections of favorite items and sharing them with other users. The behavior struck a chord with Silberman, and he shifted the company to building Pinterest, which allowed users to create collections of a variety of items and share them with each other.
The development of Pinterest began in December 2009, and the site launched the prototype as a
closed beta
A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
in March 2010. Nine months after the launch, the website had 10,000 users.
Silbermann said he wrote to the first 5,000 users, offering his phone number and even meeting with some of them.
The launch of an
iPhone app in early March 2011 brought in more downloads than expected.
This was followed by an
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...
app and Pinterest Mobile, a version of the website for non-iPhone users.
Silbermann and a few programmers operated the site out of a small apartment until the summer of 2011.
![Pinterest logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Pinterest_logo.png)
Pinterest grew rapidly during this period. 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 service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
s, according to
Hitwise
Hitwise is a division of Connexity, that measures behavior across desktop, tablet and smartphone devices. Hitwise provides marketers with online insights to help them understand, track and grow market share. Using Hitwise, marketers can define ...
data, with 11 million total visits per week. Pinterest won the Best New
Startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
of 2011 at the
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...
Crunchies Awards. 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.
At the 2012
Webby Awards
The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...
, Pinterest won Best Social Media App and People's Voice Award for best functioning visual design.
![Silbermann at SXSW](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Silbermann_at_SXSW.jpg)
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. In October 2012, Pinterest launched business accounts allowing businesses to either convert their existing personal accounts into business accounts or start from scratch.
In April 2017, Pinterest removed their dedicated
post "liking" feature as it seemed redundant to "boards", which are user collections of posts. Users' existing indexes of liked posts were converted into a collection ("board") named as such.
Although starting out as a "social network" with boards, in later years the company has put increasing emphasis in
visual search
Visual search is a type of perception, perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature (the target) among other objects or features (the distractors). Visual s ...
and
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
, such as shopping catalogs.
In February 2019, ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' stated that Pinterest secretly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. The total valuation of the company at the time reached $12 billion. They went public on April 18, 2019, at $19 per share, closing the day at $24.40 per share.
For 2020, Pinterest reported an advertising revenue of $1.7 billion, an increase of 48% from 2019.
On March 3, 2021, Pinterest announced "Pinterest Premiere", a video ads product "which will appear in people’s feeds, targeted to their interests and other characteristics."
Later in April, chief financial officer Todd Morgenfeld announced plans to spend more money on marketing in order to offset a potential slowdown in activity as the
United States economy
The United States is a highly developed mixed-market economy and has the world's largest nominal GDP and net wealth. It has the second-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) behind China. It has the world's seventh-highest per capita GDP ...
reopened, with more people getting
vaccinated for COVID-19.
On October 20, 2021, Bloomberg reported that
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
is interested in acquiring Pinterest, with a potential price of around $70 a share. PayPal's board and management decided later that same week to back away from a potential deal.
In December 2021, Pinterest acquired the editing and video creation app Vochi.
Following this, In May 2022, it was announced that Pinterest released a new video streaming app “Pinterest TV studio”. The app is aimed at allowing users to live-stream on its platform and use different devices for different angles while live-streaming on the Pinterest platform.
On June 28, 2022, Pinterest announced that co-founder, CEO and President, Ben Silberman would transition to the newly created role of Executive Chairman, and online commerce expert Bill Ready will become Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors.
Features and content
The creators behind Pinterest summarized the service as a "catalogue of ideas" that inspires users to "go out and do that thing", although that it is not an image-based "
social network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
". It also has a very large fashion profile. In later years, Pinterest has also been described as a "
visual search engine
A visual search engine is a search engine designed to search for information on the World Wide Web through the input of an image or a search engine with a visual display of the search results. Information may consist of web pages, locations, ot ...
".
Pinterest consists mainly of "pins" and "boards". 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". Boards are collections of pins dedicated to a theme such as quotations, travel, or weddings. Boards with multiple ideas can have different sections that further contain multiple pins. Users can follow and unfollow other users as well as boards, which would fill the "home feed".
Content can also be found outside Pinterest and similarly uploaded to a board via the "Save" button, which can be downloaded to the
bookmark
A bookmark is a thin marking tool, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep track of a reader's progress in a book and allow the reader to easily return to where the previous reading session ended. Alternate materials for book ...
bar on a web browser,
or be implemented by a webmaster directly on the website. It was originally called the "Pin it" button but was renamed in 2016 to "Save" due to international expansion, making the site more intuitive to new users.
In August 2016, Pinterest launched a video player that lets users and brands upload and store clips of any length straight to the site.
Exploring
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 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.
In 2015, Pinterest implemented a feature that allows users to search with images instead of words.
In March 2020, Pinterest introduced the "Today" tab on the home feed which shows trending pins.
In October 2022, Pinterest announced its video-focused “Idea Pins” feature will now include the ability to add popular tracks from top artists, thanks to new licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell Music, Merlin and BMG.
Visual search
In 2017, Pinterest introduced a "
visual search
Visual search is a type of perception, perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature (the target) among other objects or features (the distractors). Visual s ...
" function that allows users to search for elements in images (existing pins, existing parts of a photo, or new photos) and guide users to suggested similar content within Pinterest's database. The tools powered by
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
are called Pinterest Lens, Shop the Look, and Instant Ideas.
Shopping and catalogs
The platform has drawn businesses, especially retailers, to create pages aimed at promoting their companies online as a "virtual storefront".
In 2013, Pinterest introduced a new tool called "Rich Pins", to enhance the customer experience when browsing through pins made by companies. Business pages can include various data, topics, and information such as prices of products, ratings of movies or ingredients for recipes.
In June 2015, Pinterest unveiled "buyable pins" that allows users to purchase things directly from Pinterest.
In October 2018, the buyable pins feature was replaced by "Product Pins"
In March 2019, Pinterest added product catalogs and personalized shopping recommendations with the "more from
rand
The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...
option, showcasing a range of product Pins from the same business.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest Analytics is much like
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.
As o ...
. It is a created service that generates comprehensive statistics on a specific website's traffic, commonly used by marketers. ''Pins'', ''pinners'', ''repins'', and ''repinners'' are some aspects of user data that Pinterest Analytics provides. It also collects data that depicts the percentage of change within a specific time, to determine if a product is more popular on a specific day during the week, or slowly becoming unpopular. This data helps marketing agencies alter their strategies to gain more popularity, often changing the visual content to appeal to the Pinterest community. The "Most Clicked" tab in Pinterest Analytics demonstrates products that are more likely to sell. Through the access of Pinterest Analytics, companies receive insight to data via
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
.
Creator Fund
In the "creator economy" era, social media platforms need to understand how to appease content creators to grow and sustain the platform's success. Thus, many sites now seek to support influencers and micro-celebrities to maintain engagement on the platform. However, Pinterest has typically differed from the standard of social media sites, with its conception creating a digital and visual bookmarking platform for displaying personal identities and tastes.
The Pinterest interface emphasizes the content of pins and links while the users are the media through which the content is communicated, spreading among users through pinning and repinning. Therefore, Pinterest reduces the competitive and comparative nature of typical social media behavior by not centering its experience on whom people follow and their followers. The individualized formulation of the app makes it not very social; instead, it serves its pursuit to discover, develop, and refine personal interests.
Pinterest faces a decline in a period with the creator economy where platforms like Tik-Tok allow content creators to directly engage with users, maintaining consistent engagement and presence on the app. Pinterest is not known for being a helpful app for content creators. However, the company is hoping to change that element. In 2021, the site announced its new Creator Fund, which aims to support creators and their ability to monetize their efforts to preserve engagement and interactions on the platform.
The program's initial launch increased creators' overall monthly views by 72%. Pinterest will invest $1.2 million in underrepresented creators via cash grants, ad credits, and equipment.
Ultimately, Pinterest recognizes the importance of the creator economy of social media. Without fostering the success of creators, the platform will lose engagement against other platforms that support the creator experience.
Usage
Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use.
The service is currently accessible through a web browser, and apps for
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
,
Android, and
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
PCs.
In February 2013,
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
and
ComScore stated that Pinterest had 48.7 million users globally, and a study released in July 2013 by French social media agency Semiocast revealed the website had 70 million users worldwide. In October 2016, the company had 150 million monthly active users (70 million in the U.S. and 80 million outside it), rising to 175 million monthly active users by April 2017 and 250 million in September 2018.
As of July 2020, there were over 400 million monthly active users.
Around 2020, Pinterest was thought to flood search results in
Google Images
Google Images (previously Google Image Search) is a search engine owned by Google that allows users to search the World Wide Web for images. It was introduced on July 12, 2001 due to a demand for pictures of the green Versace dress of Jennifer Lo ...
. In 2022 Google claimed to have performed changes to increase "diversity" in the search results. Pinterest claimed that, as a consequence of Google's changes of November 2021, "U.S. monthly active users coming to Pinterest from the web, desktop and mobile web declined around 30% year over year".
Demographics
Pinterest has largely appealed to women, especially with its early user base. A 2020 report found that over 60% of the global users are women. Although men have not been a primary audience on Pinterest, it's been found that their usage has increased 48%. In terms of age distribution, users between the ages of 18-25 have grown twice as fast as those over the age of 25. However, both users between the ages of 18-25 and users between the ages of 25-40 have been driving the growth of Pinterest.
In science
Data from Pinterest has been used for research in different areas. For example, it is possible to find patterns of activity that attract the attention of audience and content reposting, including the extent to which users specialize in particular topics, and
homophily
Homophily () is a concept in sociology describing the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "". The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies: over have observed ...
among users. Another work focused on studying the characteristics, manifestations and overall effects of user behaviors from various aspects, as well as correlations between neighboring users and the
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...
of the network structure. There is also study, that based on Pinterest proposed a novel
pinboard
A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. B ...
recommendation system for Twitter users.
Corporate affairs
![Pinterest headquarters (San Francisco, 2019) 02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Pinterest_headquarters_%28San_Francisco%2C_2019%29_02.jpg)
Pinterest, Inc. is headquartered in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, California. Originally it was based in
Palo Alto
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was estab ...
before moving in 2012.
In early 2011, the company secured a US$10 million
Series A
A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...
financing led by Jeremy Levine and Sarah Tavel of
Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London.
Bessemer ...
. In October 2011, the company secured US$27 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, which valued the company at US$200 million.
Co-founder Paul Sciarra left his position at Pinterest in April 2012 for a consulting job as
entrepreneur in residence
An Entrepreneur in residence, or Executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically lead ...
at
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
.
On 17 May 2012, Japanese electronic commerce company
Rakuten
() is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...
announced it was leading a $100 million investment in Pinterest, alongside investors including Andreessen Horowitz,
Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London.
Bessemer ...
, and
FirstMark Capital
FirstMark Capital is a venture capital firm based in New York City. FirstMark invests in early-stage technology companies, frequently as the first institutional investor. Notable investments include Airbnb, Pinterest, Shopify, DraftKings, Upwork, ...
, based on a
valuation of $1.5 billion.
On September 20, 2012, Pinterest announced the hiring of its new head of engineering, Jon Jenkins. Jenkins came from
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
, where he spent eight years as an engineering lead and was also a director of developer tools, platform analysis and website platform.
In late October 2013, Pinterest secured a $225 million round of equity funding that valued the website at $3.8 billion.
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 2015, investors valued Pinterest, Inc. at $11 billion,
making it a "
unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...
" (a start-up with a valuation exceeding $1 billion). the company was valued at $12 billion.
In June 2017, Pinterest raised $150 million from a group of existing investors.
In August 2020, Pinterest paid $89.5 million to cancel a large office space lease on a to-be-completed complex in San Francisco's SoMa area, near their current headquarters.
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 April 2015, Pinterest acquired the team from Hike Labs, which had been developing a mobile publishing application called Drafty.
In May 2016, Pinterest acquired mobile deep linking startup URX to help accelerate its content understanding efforts. The URX team's expertise in mobile content discovery and recommendation would prove critical to helping Pinterest understand its corpus of over 100 billion pins, to better recommend them to its users.
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
Jelly was a Q&A platform app which was created by Jelly Industries, a search-engine company founded and led by Biz Stone, one of Twitter's co-founders. In March 2017, Jelly was acquired by Pinterest for an undisclosed amount.
Jelly differentia ...
, a small search-engine company founded by
Biz Stone
Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel ...
.
In December 2021, Pinterest announced the acquisition of the Vochi app.
In June 2022, Pinterest announced their definitive agreement to acquire San Francisco based AI-driven fashion shopping platform, The Yes. Pinterest announced that it had closed the acquisition on June 10, 2022.
Criticism
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
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(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
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
come to play.
A "nopin" HTML
meta tag
Meta elements are tags used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page.
They are part of a web page's head section. Multiple Meta elements with different attributes can be used on the same page. Meta elements can ...
was released by Pinterest on 20 February 2012 to allow websites to opt out of their images being pinned. On 24 February 2012,
Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
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
Behance (stylized as Bēhance) is a social media platform owned by Adobe whose main focus is to showcase and discover creative work.
Behance was founded by Matias Corea and Scott Belsky in November 2005. It was acquired by Adobe in December 2012 ...
,
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
and
Vimeo
Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
. 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.
Content creators on sites such as
iStock
iStock is an online royalty free, international micro stock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The firm offers millions of photos, illustrations, clip art, videos and audio tracks. Artists, designers and photographers world ...
have expressed concern over their work being reused on Pinterest without permission.
Getty Images
Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...
said that it was aware of Pinterest's copyright issues and was in discussion with them.
Legal status
In February 2012, photographer and lawyer Kirsten Kowalski wrote a blog post explaining how her interpretation of copyright law led her to delete all her infringing pins.
The post contributed to scrutiny over Pinterest's legal status.
The post went
viral and reached founder Ben Silbermann who contacted Kowalski to discuss making the website more compliant with the law.
Terms of service
Pinterest's earlier terms of service ambiguously asserted ownership of user content. A March 2012 article in ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'' criticized Pinterest's self-imposed ownership of user content stating that "Pinterest's
terms of service have been garnering a lot of criticism for stating in no uncertain terms that anything you 'pin' to their site belongs to them. Completely. Wholly. Forever and for always."
At the time, Pinterest's terms of service stated that "By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services."
Under these terms all personal, creative and intellectual property posted to the site belonged to the website and could be sold. A ''Scientific American'' blogger pointed out that this contradicted another line in the terms of service, that "Cold Brew Labs does not claim any ownership rights in any such Member Content".
Several days later, Pinterest unveiled updated terms of service that, once implemented in April, ended the site's previous claims of ownership of posted images. "Selling content was never our intention", said the company in a blog post.
Use by scammers
Social engineering of Pinterest users by scammers to propagate surveys promising free products was noted by the computer security firm
Symantec in March 2012. Scam images, often branded with a well-known company name like
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...
, offer incentives such as gift cards for completing a survey. Once the link in the description is clicked, users are taken to an external site and asked to re-pin the scam image. Victims are
phished for their personal information and the promised free product is never delivered.
Censorship
In its 2019 "Who Has Your Back?" report, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
gave Pinterest a three (out of six) star rating, highlighting improvements in the company's
transparency reports about government takedown notices, but criticizing the lack of a clear commitment to notify users about content removals and account suspensions.
In March 2017, Chinese authorities blocked Pinterest without explanation. The block was imposed during the annual
National People's Congress
The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China.
With 2, ...
, a politically sensitive period in the country. While Pinterest is not known for its political content, experts identified the ban as consistent with Chinese government efforts to use
website blocks and the "
Great Firewall
The Great Firewall (''GFW''; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected for ...
" as an
industrial policy
An industrial policy (IP) or industrial strategy of a country is its official strategic effort to encourage the development and growth of all or part of the economy, often focused on all or part of the manufacturing sector. The government takes m ...
tool to promote Chinese tech companies (e.g.,
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...
,
Youku
Youku Tudou Inc. (formerly Youku Inc.), doing business as Youku (), is a video hosting service based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited.
Youku has its headquarters in the Sinosteel Plaza in Haidian ...
,
Weibo Weibo may refer to:
* Microblogging in China, or China-based microblogging services (), including:
** NetEase Weibo (), launched by NetEase
** People's Weibo (), launched by ''People's Daily''
** Phoenix Weibo (), launched by Phoenix Television
** W ...
, and
Renren
The Renren Network (), formerly known as the Xiaonei Network (), is a Chinese social networking service similar to Facebook.[Madras High Court
The Madras High Court is a High Court in India. It has appellate jurisdiction over the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is located in Chennai, and is the third oldest high court of India after the Calcutta High C ...](_blank)
order in July 2016 to block a list of around 225 "rogue websites indulging in online piracy and infringement of copyright". The block was temporary.
Content policies and user bans
In October 2012, Pinterest added a new feature allowing users to report others for negative and offensive activity or block other users if they do not want to view their content, a bid that the company said aimed to keep the site "positive and respectful."
In December 2018, Pinterest began to take steps to block health
misinformation
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. It differs from disinformation, which is ''deliberately'' deceptive. Rumors are information not attributed to any particular source, and so are unreliable and often unverified, but can turn ou ...
from its recommendations engine, and blocked various searches, content, and user accounts that related to, or promoted,
unproved and disproven cancer treatments.
The company said it also blocked multiple accounts that linked to external websites that sold
supplements and other products that were not scientifically validated.
[ In January 2019, Pinterest stopped returning search results relating to ]vaccine
A vaccine is a biological Dosage form, preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease, infectious or cancer, malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verifie ...
s, in an effort to somehow slow the increase of anti-vaccination
Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain abou ...
content on the platform.[ Prior to the measure, the company said that the majority of vaccination-related images shared on the platform were anti-vaccination, contradicting the scientific research establishing the safety of vaccines.][
In June 2019, ]anti-abortion
Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respons ...
group Live Action
Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ga ...
was banned from Pinterest; the company said the permanent suspension was imposed for spreading "harmful misinformation, hich
Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
includes medical misinformation and conspiracies that turn individuals and facilities into targets for harassment or violence."
In December 2019, following a campaign from the activist group Color of Change
Color of Change is a progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization in the United States. It was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Amer ...
, Pinterest announced that it would restrict content that advertises wedding events on former slave plantations
A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century.
Slavery
Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensi ...
.
Culture of discrimination
In 2020, two former Pinterest employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks went public about their experience at Pinterest. Both women recounted experiences of discrimination at work, including racist comments, unequal pay, and punishment for speaking out. Additionally, Ozoma claims that the company failed to protect her when personal information was shared with hate sites by a colleague of hers. In response, Pinterest released an apology statement and CEO Ben Silbermann sent an email to all employees pushing the company to do better.
In August 2020, hundreds of Pinterest staff participated in a virtual walkout in support of two former colleagues who publicly accused the company of racism and gender discrimination.
In December 2020, Pinterest agreed to pay its former Chief Operating Officer a record-breaking $20M+ to settle a lawsuit alleging "rampant discrimination, hostile work environment, and misogyny". The settlement was conditional upon Pinterest publicly acknowledging that it must do more to improve its workplace culture.
In November 2021, Pinterest settled a lawsuit that alleged racial and gender discrimination. The company agreed to pay $50 million on improving its diversity and to release former employees from non-disclosure agreements. The settlement was in regard to allegations made by Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, who went public in June 2020 with accusations of racism and discrimination at the company.
See also
* clipix
Clipix is a privately funded company offering an online bookmarking, file sharing, and organizational tool. The utility is available in 13 languages, and as of 2014 had users in 154 countries. Clipix allows users to save online content and other ...
* List of photo-sharing websites
This article presents a non-exhaustive list of notable image-sharing websites.
Active image-sharing websites
Defunct photo-sharing websites
:''These also include sites that may still operate, but do not accept new users. Listed in chronolo ...
* Timeline of social media
This page is a timeline of social media. Major launches, milestones, and other major events are included.
Overview
Timeline
(*) Such launches are not initial launches, but rather relaunches.
See also
* Timeline of Facebook
* Timeline of I ...
* Visual marketing
Visual marketing is the discipline studying the relationship between an object, the context it is placed in and its relevant image. Representing a disciplinary link between economy, visual perception laws and cognitive psychology, the subject mainl ...
References
External links
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{{Authority control
Android (operating system) software
IOS software
2010 establishments in California
Companies based in San Francisco
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Image-sharing websites
Internet properties established in 2010
Online companies of the United States
American social networking websites
Webby Award winners
American companies established in 2010
2019 initial public offerings