Pinterest Looks To “Promoted Pins”

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Pinterest, the social media platform for sharing costumes for animals, cupcake decorating ideas, and general food porn is looking to finally move to monetize the site while it continues to grow in  popularity.

Pinterest Looks To "Promoted Pins"

Pinterest was founded by three men

The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. It is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and investors. I know, given those who actively use Pinterest, it’s tough to imagine that no woman was involved in the founding of the company that boasts millions of “scrapbooking” women who make up the clear majority of its users.

Pinterest is a unique site, but its plans to monetize the platform is anything but unique. Unless, of course, you are referring to the fact that it won’t be charging money to advertisers in its “promoted pin” unveiling, unlike Twitter and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) who Pinterest seems to be following.

Initially, Pinterest won’t collect money from advertisers

In a company blog post, Pinterest’s CEO Ben Silbermann said the company will not initially collect money from advertisers and will clearly mark promoted pins as ads.

“Nobody’s paying for anything yet—we want to see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think,” he wrote in the post.

“We’re going to start experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses,” Silbermann wrote on the company’s blog.

After Time magazine awarded Pinterest a “Top 50 Websites of 2011” award, the company quickly began seeing users rush to the site. Prior to the article, Pinterest had 2.4 million users. That number now stands at 46.2 million people in the U.S. in July on desktop and mobile, according to measurement firm ComScore.

With the announcement of “promoted pins” the company reiterated that it would not look to either banner ads or pop-ups to add revenue to the site.

Given yesterdays announcement, it’s clear that the people at Pinterest know that they need to develop a revenue model. However, unlike its users who do remarkable things with objects found around the house, it doesn’t appear that Pinterest has found anyone lying around the office with the same levels of creativity.

While brands have found quite a following on Pinterest, Pinterest itself seems a little lost.

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