Pinterest

 The three years' old “social scrap booking” community stormed the web  in 2011, reaching headline-grabbing double-digit-million monthly visitors faster than any other website before it. The growth rate is just fascinating, although  the rate is smaller as compared to Google but who cares. This is the best part of the presentation.  Well, just kidding. Let's begin by addressing the key points of the presentation.

key features of Pinterest

Pinterest is bout viewing ,organizing and sharing image. And it is about share the things you love.  As we can see, google+'s growth rate is the largest followed by Pinterest, facebook and Twitter.  And it is ranked 5th in the social network. As we can see, the trend is heading to the direction of social interaction and sharing. Why does the sharing of photos can become an app. Facebook also have this functionality.  Well, when you want to look for or share a photo. You wont go to facebook to do that as it is a network for socializing. It is a wrong place to look for something.  Pinterest find the necessity to build this app. Thus, it is a huge success. 

Something bad about Pinterest 

Although it does have a simple clean UI and good design, nothing comes perfect, so does Pinterest.  It does not have a visible search bar and the ranking algorithm is not familiar to normal users.  Due to the lack of search bar and view history, user cannot possibly check what have been browsed or bookmarked. And what's more,  pictures are not zoom-able. Well,  this really sucks. It is not technically impossible to add this feature to Pinterest. but why this feature is not added remains questionable.  

B2C Business Model

The business model adopted by pinterest is business to comsumers. B2B marketers can use this to their advantage and incorporate Pinterest as a way to draw traffic to brand-building content that drives interest and engages both customers and prospects. For example, the app can be free to users who need the basic function. Premium edition to those users who need more advanced function like customizing   the theme and skin style.  And Enterprise  for business companies who are doing E-commerce business.  B2B, B2C and C2C can all be adopted to expand the market and earn a greater market share. 

I just registered for the pinterest app. Well, honestly speaking, i do not really like the way it registers a new user. But i hate to verify with my email. If possible, i always avoid it.  As mentioned in the presentation, 90% are female users. I am not one of them in the remaining 10%.   I like to view funny pictures.  Since there is no search bar, i quite it honestly speaking. it is not because it is not user friendly. It just failed to catch my interest. As a personally habit, I still use facebook and other social network app to browse the pictures shared by my friends. At least i know who post these pictures, and i can comment to it or say something funny.  Thus. Pinterest is not for me.  Girls may love it.

What is next? The business model. I believe the pinterest adopt this B2C business model for a reason. It is the most basic business model and with that we may choose to expand it to B2B or C2C. However , i have reasons to believe this simple business model is the best for Pinterest. As it is address a unique area of social networking, it attracts users by its unique well-established feature- photo-sharing. It is simple and it is good.  They do not really have to take the risk to adopt other business model. It may not be worth it. Else, one day, it may lose its core competency as it may become another version of facebook or apple store. it should continue this business model and improve other aspects such as registration process ,lack of search bar
etc. 
To conclude, It is simple and it is good.