Pinterest会成为下一个Facebook吗？

    本•西尔伯曼一直在盯着屋里的几台冰箱。Pinterest公司联合创始人兼首席执行官和我一起站在该公司帕罗奥图办公区的休息室中，整个办公区的面积只有一个车库那么大。西尔伯曼刚刚参加完在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的“西南偏南（SXSW）交互式电影节”，飞回帕罗奥图。而两天后，全新改版的Pinterest网站的即将上线。这一切确实会令人目不暇接。但此时此刻，西尔伯曼的全部注意力都集中在三台亮闪闪的冰箱上。就在他短暂离开公司，前往奥斯汀时，这几台冰箱被完好地送过来，上面还打着Pinterest的标识。三台冰箱放在房间后面窄小的区域内，就摆在桌上足球桌的后面。此刻，3名公司员工正在桌上足球桌边开会。虽说只是3名员工，但其实已经占了公司员工总数的15%。“我只离开了一天，公司就这么上档次了，”他说。“过去我们总是去好市多超市（Costco）解决吃饭问题。”

    如今，这些都是老黄历了。那时，米特•罗姆尼（美国共和党人，正在寻求竞选总统资格——译注）的妻子安还没有开始在Pinterest上摆放家里人的照片，瑞茜•威瑟斯彭（奥斯卡影后——译注）也还没有冲着柯南•奥布莱恩激情澎湃地喊出“那是地球上最棒、最出色的技艺组合！”，美国陆军也没有发布该网站的使用指南，而Pinterest也还不是有史以来发展最快的网站。市场研究机构康姆斯科（Comscore）的数据显示，3月份，Pinterest网站已拥有注册用户1,780万，短短一个月就增加了52%。而且，网站目前尚未向所有人开放（只有受邀用户才能加入）。

    也许有人是初次听说Pinterest，这是个表面看似简单，却能让人疯狂上瘾的社交媒体网站，用户可在网站的数字公告栏上收集、共享图片。多数社交网站都是首先在美国沿海地区热衷于尝试新技术的人中流行开来，Pinterest最忠实的用户却是一群来自中西部且热衷于使用剪贴簿的人。她们大多数是女性，借助这个网站实现婚礼策划、保存菜谱、交流厨房装修的点子等等。

    由于发展迅速，今年29岁的西尔伯曼突然之间成了投资者和企业关注的焦点。他们绞尽脑汁，想要在Pinterest里插上一脚。盖普公司（Gap）和西榆公司（West Elm）等大品牌以及在线精品店纷纷亮相于Pinterest，有些甚至已经尝到了入驻这家网站带来的甜头。事实上，这些用户发表的帖子刚好起到推荐信的作用，他们追随者只需点击产品图片便能进一步了解详情。2月份，Pinterest的流量甚至超过了Twitter、Google+、商务社交网站LinkedIn、以及YouTube等几家社交网站的流量总和。同时，那些最初错失对Pinterest投资良机的投资者（以男性为主）也开始后悔不已。去年10月，该公司在一笔融资交易中，从风险资本公司安德森-霍洛维茨（Andreessen Horowitz）融到了2,700万美元，据说当时Pinterest的估价已达2亿美元。（这家风投机构的联合创始人）马克•安德森就坦承，他开始根本没有认识到Pinterest的价值，直到自己公司一名女性研究员坚持要求他重新予以考虑，他才开始改变看法。安德森称：“从行业历史来看，IT行业的产品最初主要是面向男人还是女人？毫无疑问是男人。”

    无论如何，西尔伯曼现在必须要扩充公司规模，适应网站用户的爆炸式增长。这种超常规增长很难应对，对当事公司来说是个巨大的挑战。大家应该记得“失败的鲸鱼”吧？Twitter当初就曾经为盛名所累。最近几周，西尔伯曼及其团队召开了周一例会，通常是到附近的玛克辛酒馆（Bistro Maxine）边喝咖啡边聊，讨论如何确保网站周四改版后的平稳运行。【通常情况下，给亚马逊（Amazon）的网络服务部门签署个支票就万事大吉了。】当然，西尔伯曼还必须想法子赚钱。就这点而言，《财富》杂志（Fortune）了解到，Pinterest已经雇佣了蒂姆•坎道尔来负责扩建公司业务，他曾在Facebook担任了多年的货币化总监。

    尽管Pinterest目前风光无限，已经成为硅谷当前最热门的公司，但面对它的成功和管理这家公司所带来的巨大压力，西尔伯曼表现得出奇的冷静。他讲话时非常平静，以至于我在和他谈话时为了配合他，不得不压低自己的嗓门。他的目光须臾不离挂在墙上的平板显示屏，上面显示着用户使用Pinterest服务的实时数据。此外，谈话过程中，他隔一会儿就要回复一下有关客户支持的电子邮件。他说，他就是凭借这些看似平凡的工作才得以不断完善Pinterest。Pinterest位于帕罗奥图的办公区中贴着一幅海报，上面写着“快速行动，打破常规”（Facebook上的一句词儿），但西尔伯曼在谈到Pinterest时，仿佛在对待一件怕人碰碎的传家宝。“当你打开Pinterest时，那感觉应该像是打开一本别人专门为你手工制作的书，”他解释道。“里面的每样东西都好像是你在乎的人亲手为你挑选的。”

    译者：大海

    Ben Silbermann can't stop staring at the refrigerators. The Pinterest co-founder and CEO and I are standing in the break room of his company's garage-size Palo Alto office. He's just flown back from Austin's SXSW interactive festival, and a redesign of his website is two days away. It's all a little overwhelming. But at this moment his full attention is focused on three glowing refrigerators. Sometime during his brief absence, a service has delivered them fully stocked and branded with the company logo. They're wedged into the tiny backroom behind the foosball table that three employees -- roughly 15% of his workforce -- are using for a conference. "I've been gone for one day, and it's so upscale," he says. "We used to just run to Costco all the time."

    That was before. Before Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, began organizing family photos on Pinterest. Before Reese Witherspoon gushed to Conan O'Brien that it was "a collection of the most amazing, wonderful craftiness on the earth!" Before the U.S. Army issued a guide for how to use it, and before Pinterest emerged as the fastest-growing website of all time. In March the site registered 17.8 million users, according to Comscore, a 52% jump in just one month -- and it isn't even open to everyone (would-be "pinners" must still request an invitation to join).

    Pinterest, for the uninitiated, is a deceptively simple-sounding, insanely addictive social media site that lets users collect and share images on digital pinboards. Most social-networking sites have first become popular among tech's early adopters along the country's coasts. But Pinterest found its most passionate users among the Midwestern scrapbooking set -- a mostly female group -- who have turned to it to plan weddings, save recipes, and post ideas for kitchen renovations.

    This growth has thrust Silbermann, 29, into the spotlight as investors and businesses alike try to figure out how they can get in on the action. Brands -- from large companies like Gap (GPS) and West Elm to online boutiques -- are tripping over themselves to establish a presence on it, and some are starting to reap the rewards of being "pinned," a de facto referral that prompts followers to click on product pictures to learn more. In February Pinterest drove more traffic to websites than Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn (LNKD), and YouTube combined. Meanwhile, the same (mostly male) investors who initially passed on Pinterest are kicking themselves. The company in October raised $27 million from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in a deal that valued Pinterest at a reported $200 million. Marc Andreessen himself readily admits he didn't get it until a female researcher on staff urged him to reconsider. Says Andreessen: "Our industry historically … do we produce products initially aimed primarily at men or women? You'd have to say men."

    Amid all the noise, Silbermann must now build out a company that can keep up with Pinterest's user explosion. This type of hypergrowth has been a challenge for companies to manage -- remember the "fail whale" that signaled Twitter was suffering under the weight of its own popularity? In recent weeks Silbermann and his team have held a Monday meeting -- usually in the form of a coffee run to Bistro Maxine -- to figure out how to keep the site running on Thursday. (Writing a check to Amazon's web service unit usually does the trick.) Oh, and Silbermann must figure out how to make money. To that end, Fortune has learned, Pinterest just hired Tim Kendall, who spent many years as Facebook's director of monetization, to build out the business.

    Silbermann seems to be maintaining an almost eerily level head about Pinterest's success as well as the stress of running Silicon Valley's current "it" company. He talks so quietly that during our conversation I felt compelled to drop my own volume to match his. His eye is always on the wall-mounted flat screen that displays real-time data about how pinners are using the service. He takes a regular turn at answering customer-support e-mails, a mundane task that, he says, helps him make Pinterest even better. And while Pinterest's Palo Alto digs feature a poster with the words move fast and break things, a mantra at Facebook, Silbermann talks about Pinterest the way one talks about a fragile heirloom. "When you open Pinterest, it should feel like someone has hand-made a book for you," he explains. "Every item should feel like it's handpicked for you by a person you care about."