What is Pinterest? History of Pinterest

A reader asked me what Pinterest is. Today I will talk about what Pinterest is and its history. If you are interested, come and have a look!

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is the world's largest social image sharing website. The website allows users to create and manage themed collections of images, such as events, interests, and hobbies. Pinterest was founded by Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. Pinterest is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and inventors.

History of Pinterest

Pinterest is similar to earlier social bookmarking systems, such as David Galbraith's Wists project in 2005. Pinterest allows users to store images and organize them into categories. Popular categories include travel, cars, food, movies, humor, home design, sports, fashion, and art.

Pinterest began construction in December 2009 and launched a beta version in March 2010. Nine months after its launch, Pinterest had 10,000 users. Silbermann and a few programmers ran Pinterest in a small apartment until the summer of 2011.

On August 16, 2011, Pinterest was named one of the 50 best websites in the world in 2011 by Time magazine. In early March 2011, Pinterest launched an iPhone app, and in August of the same year, it also launched an iPad app.

Notable entrepreneurs and investors, including Jack Abraham, Michael Birch, Scott Belsky, Brian Cohen, Shana Fisher, Ron Conway, FirstMark Capital, Kevin Hartz, Jeremy Stoppelman, Hank Vigil and Fritz Lanman, have invested in Pinterest.

In January 2012, according to comScore, Pinterest had 11.7 million unique users. Most of Pinterest users are women.