Pinterest掌门人的盈利蓝图

    只有极少数初创企业的增长强劲到（暂时）不用在意盈利，而本•西尔伯曼所领导的图片分享网站Pinterest就是其中之一。西尔伯曼正专注于攻克互联网上的一大难题。当用户搜索“灰色西榆树沙发”（这样具体的东西时），谷歌（Google）好用极了。但假如你想广泛探索呢？在5月29日于洛杉矶郊外举行的AllThingsD大会上，西尔伯曼在演讲中解释道：“用户如何发现事物确实是个难题。‘我的客厅应该怎样布置？’这种问题是我们目前最感兴趣的。”

    这个问题眼下与我本人切身相关。我同恋人弗朗西斯刚刚搬家，我们一直在考虑该怎么布置新家。Pinterest拥有一系列视觉效果极佳的数字公告板，于是自然成了我们组织这番搜索的工具。我创建并与她共享了一块叫做“上西区”的数字公告板，我们在上面“钉”满了各种图片：沙发、地毯、灯具，有时候还有塑料麋鹿头（因为我听说它挂在墙上特别好看）。我们都不知道自己到底想要什么，所以我们一头扎进Pinterest的海量图片中，在全网搜索，把觉得有意思的图片都“钉”起来。

    Pinterest的用户群正在壮大，我们俩不过是其中的一个缩影。过去一年中，Pinterest的用户数飙升了82％，达到了5,400万。近期一轮金额高达2亿美元的融资对Pinterest的估值为25亿美元。Pinterest是整个互联网上为其它网站带去推荐流量最多的网站之一。不过，公司深居简出的联席创始人兼首席执行官本•西尔伯曼仍然认为Pinterest还是一家小公司。提到公司未来的计划以及商业模式，他三缄其口，只说：“我们目前还没有实现盈利。”

    Pinterest最有可能盈利的机遇，很可能就在我和弗朗西斯追随的那些信息来源中。它们包括：我的朋友卡拉、西榆树，以及一位非常有品位的大学同学。目前，我在以同样的方式搜索，这些资源对我来说都非常有用。Facebook等社交网络正在进行试验，希望对用户而言，系统推送的广告能变得同自己好友发布的内容一样有用。可是当我上Facebook时，我并不是特意要选购商品。但Pinterest就不同了。西尔伯曼说：“思索这个命题的时候，我们认为人们所思所想、所作所为以及所购买的东西之间都存在着直接的联系。这一点显而易见。”

    未来这可能成为一个巨大的商机。但眼下，西尔伯曼还需要继续改进Pinterest，把它变得更简洁美观。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann leads one of a small number of privileged startups for whom growth is so strong that money is not (yet) the point. Instead he's focused on solving one of the largest conundrums on the web. Google is great when you're searching for "West Elm couch gray," but what happens when you want to discover more broadly? Speaking at the AllThingsD conference outside Los Angeles on May 29, he explained, "The problem of how you discover things is a really tough one. Problems like, 'What should my living room look like?' That's at the heart of our interests right now."

    That's a personal question at the moment. My partner, Frances, and I just moved into a new home, and we've been trying to figure out how to decorate. Pinterest -- the visually stunning collection of digital pin boards -- has become the logical organizing tool for the search. I created a board called "Upper West Side" that I shared with her, and we've populated it with couches and rugs and lamps and the occasional plastic moose head (looks great on a wall, I'm told). Neither of us knows what we want exactly, so we plunge through images on Pinterest and on the larger web, pinning anything that looks interesting.

    We're part of a growing community of Pinterest power-users. In the past year, Pinterest has jumped 82% to 54 million users. Thanks to a recent $200 million round of funding, it has been valued at $2.5 billion. And it is one of the largest sources of referral traffic on the web. Yet its reclusive co-founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann, still thinks of the company as small. He's reticent to offer too much information on plans for the future or suggest a business model, saying only: "Right now, we don't make money."

    The most compelling opportunity for Pinterest to turn a profit off of this likely exists in the list of sources that Frances and I follow. They include my friend Carla, West Elm, and a former college classmate with great taste. Each of these resources is useful to me at the moment that I'm searching in the same way. Social networks like Facebook (FB) are experimenting with opportunities to make advertising in the newsfeed as useful as content from my friends is to me, but usually when I'm on Facebook, I'm not shopping explicitly. That's not so with Pinterest. Says Silbermann, "When we think about this mission -- we think there's a direct link between the things people think, the things people do, and the things they buy. It's explicit."

    In the future that could be a big opportunity. But at the moment, Silbermann will stick to making Pinterest better -- more simple and more beautiful -- for its pinners.