Pinterest's Rite of Web Passage—Huge Traffic, No Revenue
21.05.12
Mr. Silbermann co-founded Cold Brew Labs Inc. in 2008 and launched Pinterest, the company's only product, the following year. It has raised $37.5 million from Silicon Valley angel investors including Yelp Inc. Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman and top venture firms such as Bessemer and Andreessen Horowitz.
The closely held company wouldn't disclose financial figures, but isn't yet making much revenue and is unprofitable. Pinterest is currently valued at around $200 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The prospect of making money off of social-networking sites, which are usually free to users, has been a challenge. The options for Pinterest suggested by analysts so far, which center around selling targeted advertising and data on users' interests, aren't terribly original and run the risk of alienating users—problems faced by bigger social-networking sites such as Facebook.
But people are flocking to the site. Pinterest last month attracted more than 11 million unique visitors, more than double the 4.9 million who visited the site in November, according to comScore. Those who visited spent nearly 100 minutes on the site in January, compared with 19 minutes on professional social-networking site LinkedIn, it said.
Source: Wall Street Journal