
Pinterest to price IPO below last valuation - donohoe
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/CntmhxoqW9jHjBsVK7aYpw2
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rchaud
Ah Pinterest, strip-mining the incredible library of images across all of the
Internet, then converting them all into 200px thumbnails, and replacing the
original search results with your own, all in the noble quest to serve more
ads to more eyeballs.

This is increasingly what passes for a billion dollar company in SV today.
Aggregating other peoples stuff and putting yourself in the middle to skim a
bit off the top.

~~~
whateveracct
It's amazing that since HN's main interaction with Pinterest seems to be
Google Images (from all the complaining comments that _always_ show under any
mention of Pinterest), commenters here assume they don't actually have a
product people love (aka the source of success)

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Nextgrid
The fact that HN's (or most people's, really) main interaction with Pinterest
is Google Images spam should be concerning.

They are basically pissing off a _huge_ chunk of people (anyone who searches
for images on Google) for their own benefit.

This shouldn't be considered acceptable. I am not sure why anyone is defending
that nasty company. You usually wouldn't defend someone in the physical world
who does something similar (simple example: littering), why should it be
considered OK just because it's on the Internet?

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azinman2
Because not all products need to cater to the HN demographic to be successful.

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TeMPOraL
This is not a problem specific to HN demographic, but to anyone using image
search. They've successfully managed to destroy its utility.

~~~
whateveracct
I use Google Image search fine :) utility still kicking!

seriously I'm googling common items surrounding me and not getting ruined by
Pinterest results. I even searched "wedding ring" (a common Pinterest topic)
and got like 2 Pinterest results among my many non-Pinterest results.

~~~
Something1234
But how many of them are not garbage results from garbage sites?

Sites like keyword-suggestions and such? I can't think of anymore off the top
of my head, but they exist and they suck.

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electricityUser
The website that made Google image search suck does an IPO?

~~~
ishan1121
Do people really use Pinterest? I never found their website useful.

~~~
freddie_mercury
I think that just shows how narrow your group of acquaintances is and how out
of touch you are with a large part of the world.

250 million people use Pinterest every month. That's (approximately, though
lower than) the same ballpark as Snapchat and Twitter.

I assume you are capable of Googling their monthly user numbers, just like I
did. So I assume your post is just virtue signalling and not actually asking
in the spirit of trying to understand others, since it is obvious that yes,
people do use Pinterest.

~~~
ishan1121
250 million people may be using Pinterest currently, but I don't think
Pinterest can maintain this position with just one product. It's outdated and
most of the content is just copied from elsewhere. More and more people are
shifting to Instagram/Reddit.

I personally know people who were using Pinterest back in 2015-2016 but have
since then shifted to Instagram.

~~~
michelb
How do you make vision boards / collections on instagram/reddit? How do you
share them selectively? What do you even think Pinterest is?

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ishan1121
Boards/collections are just glorified marketing terms used to convey that
Pinterest has something new to offer. Alternatively, I can create a group chat
on Insta or I can create a private subreddit and share the interesting links
with the people I want to share. I can create multiple Insta chats and
subreddits each for different topics.

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andy_ppp
Visual note taking has so much potential, I’m really not sure how Evernote and
Pinterest cornered the market and ruined it at the same time. Same with
LinkedIn, these players somehow break their whole spaces.

~~~
burtonator
Lack of competition...

I'm trying to revamp things on the Evernote side but in a different way.

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

We're making good progress and have a GREAT hacker user base but working to
take it to the masses.

The next goal is to launch it on product hunt in 1-2 weeks.

We're also adding sharing and improving our web and mobile apps which is super
important to getting adoption.

It's also Open Source and we're going to raise money soon with a 'kickstarter'
style campaign to ask the community to fund continued development.

I want to build a platform that respect user rights and isn't trying to lock
up the users data in a proprietary platform.

The reason it's called "Polar" is that it's designed to 'freeze' your
knowledge in a safe place.

Safe being that it's Open Source and based on web standards.

I'm going to have it based on a .org style non-profit sort of like Wikimedia /
Wordpress.org but also a for-profit company which has commitments to the non-
profit which funds it in perpetuity.

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andy_ppp
Less salesy and better design aesthetics would be my advice...

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temdbej
Why couldn’t Instagram build a feature that lets you build boards of pinned
posts from other users?

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o10449366
You can save posts on Instagram, so you're technically allowed a single
"board". I could see this feature being expanded in the future, though.

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landonxjames
I believe Instagram now lets you save them in arbitrarily titled collections.
I think the only missing functionality is sharing them with other users.

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darkxanthos
This isn’t actually the title of the article. Should this be renamed?

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donohoe
It was the original title when I submitted it. It appears it was updated after
submission.

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jak92
Get out at any price?

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adamnemecek
Exactly no one is surprised.

