NEW YORK (AP) – In its five short years of life, Pinterest has become ‘the’ place where brides-to-be create wish boards of wedding china photos and do-it-yourself home renovators bookmark shiny turquoise tiles for bathrooms. It’s where people share ideas and ingenuity and get creatively inspired. And it’s fueled a new way of searching for items that’s even stolen traffic from tech giant Google.
The San Francisco-based venture capital darling was recently valued at $11 billion. While its core audience has always been female, Pinterest says its popularity is growing faster than ever among men. It is winning in the all-important social-mobile space – the vast majority of “pinners” connect from mobile devices – and is enjoying a healthy expansion overseas.
As Pinterest celebrates its fifth birthday this week – hopefully with perfect bacon cupcakes topped with a single, artisanal beeswax candle – here are five things to know about the site and where it’s headed.
WHO USES PINTEREST?
Pinterest had 79.3 million unique visitors in February (the latest data available), up 47 percent from a year earlier, according to Internet research firm comScore. The vast majority were women, but male visitors grew at a much faster clip: 62 percent for men versus 42 percent for women.