I am genuinely curious, how does the year-over-year growth of 60% come together with the pretty consistent "death curve" according to Google Trends [0]. Could they have deliberately lowered the revenue in 2017 through some clever accounting in order to come up with this number? As they have been around since ~2012, are there any prior financial metrics publicly available?
Forgive me for being blunt, I just think it’s a bit obvious: they have grown through means other than someone going to google.com and typing “Pinterest.”
I can think of a dozen reasons why that would be the case. Google Trends does not match 1:1 popularity, usage, or growth of all products.
Personally, I’m only a casual Pinterest user and have no stake in this, but the service has gotten a lot better over the last couple years.
Fun fact: It's a great place for black people when it comes to hair styles and hair care, surprisingly one of the best places. Google search can't even compare.
Google is doing a reasonably good job of making their search useless on their own. I rarely have to switch from DDG to find anything anymore, and when I do I'm frequently disappointed.
...but you have found the more accurate guess-data.
Pinterest have presumably done well with Google's carousel that shows image search results at the top of the list.
I am not sure the HN crowd is target demographic. Who here is looking for a new outfit to buy and wear? Who is wanting inspiration for some 'infinity band' tattoo?
People here just end up on Pinterest wanting images for projects, no intention of pinning boards together.
Why does this happen?
Pinterest have built a body of content that is essentially evergreen and well documented as far as images go. Nobody is interested in last week's news but images don't have this problem. Hence they get the image search results traffic.
Beyond that they do have their regular crowd looking for inspiration on clothes, home trinkets and what not. The search result blessings keep them relevant even if nobody outside the target demographic is actively using it.
Thanks for linking the Trend data. I was trying to figure out a way to express this myself. Colloquially, I feel like Pinterest used to be mentioned in conversations 5+ years ago with some frequency. For example, I would have someone mention some recipe they saw there or see links to Pinterest shared on other social networks. But in the past few years, I don't know if anyone in my circles has actually mentioned it at all. This Trend data seems to reflect what I felt through my anecdotal experience.
That said, this is US data if I am not mistaken, and Pinterest seems to have a lot of activity happening internationally. Other comments state they have more MAU outside the US than within.
If it’s US data, then your experience is my experience and it makes total sense. The trends represents search of “Pinterest” which was word of mouth driven. This was a very word of mouth driven app. Ladies in my life educated their friends, then their mothers, then their aunts, etc. They explained what it was and what “boards” are. But, it’s reached a saturation point now where everyone knows what it is.
The conversation turned to wife-> her mom “did you see my nursery board? I pinned some inspo” and no explanation is needed she already had the app installed and didn’t need to go google “Pinterest”.
Also, the women in my life love it for inspiration that definitely drives purchasing behavior. I can’t speak to whether Pinterest is monetizing that opportunity to its fullest but I certainly feel like it’s established itself as a place to research a future purchase which we all know is a valuable position to be in. I use my wife’s account occasionally to look up ideas for a home renovation or landscaping ideas. It helps. But I feel they’ve made some poor UX choices bordering on dark patterns. And with that, they are probably their own biggest risk. Eventually they will do something to totally alienate and piss off their user base.
People search for Instagram profiles and content that get's reported as news i.e. "did you see X on Y's Instagram". Same for Snapchat, which requires searching for username discovery. Pinterest doesn't have either of those traffic catalysts.
[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...