When Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are experiencing some difficulties in retaining growth and active users, Pinterest that is considered an underdog, performs well beyond expectation.
Pinterest announced that it has surpassed the 250 million monthly active user milestone, continuing a steady pace of adding 50 million monthly active users a year.
The social discovery platform had 200 million in September 2017 and 100 million in September 2015.
And from that many users, Pinterest said that there are more than 175 billion Pins created, an increase by about 100 million since 2017. Popular Pins include DIY projects, home decor and style, with each experiencing 30 percent year-over-year growth.
Pinterest also said that the majority of its users are coming out of the U.S.. as explained by co-founder Evan Sharp: "Over half of the people on Pinterest—and 80% of new signups—are from outside the United States."
As of today, there are now more than 250 million people who use Pinterest each month. But more than the size of the number, what’s truly exciting is how all those people are using Pinterest. Learn more about our Pinners : https://t.co/azuqsmBvqh
— Pinterest (@Pinterest) September 10, 2018
Pinterest was formed in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra. Operating on the web and using its own app, Pinterest approach is not by claiming itself as a social media. Instead, it is more like a visual discovery tool, collection, and storage place.
This was further highlighted by SIlbermann when he summarized the company as a "catalogue of ideas" that inspires users to "go out and do that thing", rather than as an image-based social network.
"When we first started building Pinterest eight years ago, we certainly hoped people would use it to get more creative with their daily lives. But we never imagined Pinterest would one day be one of the biggest internet platforms in history," said Sharp.
He described it by saying "That’s a lot of people (more than the population of Brazil!)"
Pinterest is not be as big as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, but it is growing fast as others are slowing down.
As part of its growth initiative, Pinterest has recruited and acquired some of the top engineers and thinkers in computer vision from Google. They include Google's computer vision researcher Chuck Rosenberg, former Google Images researcher Li Fan, followed later by Vanja Josifovski, and Google Images veteran Randy Keller.
Pinterest then leveraged AI by rolling out a feature that recommends Pins after users upload pictures of items to its platform.
Pinterest users describe the platform as their own positive corner of the internet, where "they go to learn about their personal tastes, and get the confidence to try new things."