As evidence of the fact that high-end technological platforms are still vulnerable to the same trials and tribulations as everyone else, a series of severe storms rattled service at a few of the biggest online services this weekend. Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest were among the most notable companies to suffer outages as a result of the weather.
Yesterday there were whispers on the wind that Pinterest, the bookmark social networking site, would reach a $1 billion evaluation following funding from interested parties. Now it has been revealed that Rakuten is the lead investor in the company, raising around $50 million in a total of $100 million funding round. That would value Pinterest at $1.5 billion, who has been looking for a global investor.
This week the folks at Pinterest are getting set up to move on a third round of funding as a source close to the matter reveals that the group will soon have its value set at more than $1 billion. This source spoke with TNW and let them know that Pinterest's newest deal will put them at a valuation "slightly in excess" of $1 billion, this putting the company up in range with what Facebook valued Instagram's purchase at back at the start of April - (Facebook also purchased the whole staff of Lightbox this week as well, if you want to know.) This most recent round of funding is said to include Bessemer, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark, and an unnamed international Web commerce site - get in on it!
Pinterest may be the third most popular social network on the Internet, but up to this point its presence on third-party mobile apps has been minimal. It doesn't offer developers an API (application programming interface) and there is no universal log-in feature like other services such as Facebook. But Snapguide, a newbie in the iPhone App Store that wants to make its mark in the social media world, wants to change that.
Millions of people have been "pinning" things like crazy on Pinterest, the social media platform that has managed to go from zero to hero - or, more precisely, from obscurity to the third most popular social website - in just a matter of months. Now, there's a whole new slate of stuff that people can post to the massive virtual bulletin board: videos from Vimeo.com, one of the best known YouTube rivals.
In a world where everyone believed there was no room for a social platform next to Facebook and Twitter, there's a surprising startup that has made its mark in a huge way. Or perhaps we should say, "pinned" its mark. With 17.8 million unique visitors in February, piqued interest from none other than President Obama, and a seemingly never-ending rise in media attention, Pinterest is now the third most popular social network, according to an Experian report.
Barack Obama may have a busy schedule, but apparently he still has time to pin things. The president has just joined one of the fastest growing new social platforms, Pinterest. "Organizers, infographics, murals, and cake — now pinning all of the above for #Obama2012 on Pinterest," the president's official Twitter account posted this week. Will the president's pinning fortitude help his run for reelection?
We've recently reviewed the iPhone application for the newly vastly popular social sharing website Pinterest, now we've got word straight from the source that the iPad edition is coming soon. This application would take the image-based platform and place it on the most popular gadget in recent memory, the most popular tablet computer on earth, and Apple's newest release - coming out this Friday for those of you keeping track. Today Pinterest's co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann spoke at South by Southwest's Interactive conference letting the world know how humbling this whole recent explosion of interest in the project has been.
If you're a user of Pinterest, you might not like this development. There have been increasing concerns over copyright issues with the raging popularity of Pinterest. Pinterest has grown very quickly from 4.9 million unique visitors in November of 2011 to over 11 million unique visitors as of January 2011. The massive growth is attributed in part to integration with Facebook that launched in January. As more users pin photos of all sorts of things to their Pinterest pages, copyright concerns have been mounting. This has led to Pinterest offering a way for website owners to block Pinterest pinning.