Earlier this week Pinterest, the social blogging / pinning platform, stated that it had hit a milestone by reaching 150 million monthly active users, up from the 100 million it announced in September 2015.
This is substantially lower than what the company projected for 2015. By 50 million or so, at least.
This puts the company on a path that would likely miss their 2016 projections that were set earlier this year. According to TechCrunch, Pinterest estimated they would end 2016 at 218 million monthly active users. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the company is likely to triple last year’s revenue to $300 million by the end of 2016. That figure also falls way below the projected estimates of $663 million for 2016.
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, in response to those projections, told The Wall Street Journal that “there were some early projections when we were just a couple months into building the business, but we’ve learned more about it.”
The platform, which was originally largely popular among US women, is also diversifying, with over half of its users and 75 per cent of new signups now located outside the US. 40 per cent of new signups are also men, up 70 per cent on the same period last year.
In addition to growing its audience, Pinterest has focused on expanding its mobile offering over the past 18 months, introducing its Buyable Pins ad unit which streamlines the purchase process for users and advertisers, and expanding its visual search capabilities with acquisitions and innovation.
Can Pinterest pull through and meet their earlier projects? Or are they going to fall just short of the prize?
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