Evan Sharp, Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra, the founders of Pinterest weren’t child prodigies. They weren’t being chased down the Wall Street by investors. They weren’t being hounded by potential take over bids. In fact, when they started out, no one really liked them. Raised by doctors, Ben Silbermann figured he would follow the same path as his parents. He even went on to study medicine at Yale Univeristy. However, he realised very soon that medicine wasn’t his passion or dream.
Pinterest officially came to be in the year 2010. Three months after, the online image sharing platform only had around 3,000 registered accounts. In the world of social media boom, the 3,000 users wasn’t a commendable number. However, Silbermann capitalized on these users and focused on a model which helped Pinterest grow into the phenomenon it is today.
In a lot of ways, Pinterest was the exact opposite of Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, everything which was hot at the time. Unlike these platforms, Pinterest focused on curating only images and not on real time content. One of the major reasons this image platform became such a huge success was that in the beginning, the users would hold regular meetings with their limited users. While this in itself was an unusual practice, what helped the platform grow was the online network’s ability to absorb the changes given by their users.
Pinterest also started a new campaign called Pin It Forward. According to this, users could create a pinboard and get more invites by getting friends to create pinboards. One of the major reasons for Pinterest’s outstanding leap to success is the company’s constant work at connecting with its users. They spoke to them on a regular basis and this connect helped form a strong bond even eight years after the platform launched.
What started off as a hobby for Ben Silberman, turned into a full time occupation for more than a 100 million users around the world. While Pinterest’s growth was rocky in the beginning, the company took off with a bang and according to several trade analysts, the online image sharing and buying platform is on its way to surpass existing giants like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram!
