Pinterest Reaches 200 Million Members

Pinterest's shift to mobile is paying off.

Nearly 85% of searches on Pinterest were via mobile devices, leading to monthly mobile search growth of more than 45% from a year ago, according to Pinterest. By comparison, the company's overall user growth was 40%.

The San Francisco-based start-up — founded in the midwest in 2010 by Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra — says it crossed the 200 million mark 2½ times faster than it took to reach 100 million so-called Pinners — through mobile and breakneck growth in Western Europe (France, England, Germany), Latin America (Brazil) and Asia (Japan).

Its customer base is also expanding beyond its typical use — food, decorating the home, wedding planning — to automotive and entertainment, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann says.

This year, Pinterest has added better visual discovery tools:

— A search and Lens camera search prominently on Pinterest apps.

— A deeper push into the food space, helping Pinners more easily find recipes based on diet, cook time and ingredients.

— Shed the Like button on Pins.

— Integrate its visual search technology into the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Silbermann expects the "gradual transition" to mobile to continue over the next 12 months, but declined to project how many more people will join Pinterest. (By comparison, Facebook says it has 2 billion monthly active users and 1.3 billion for Messenger. Twitter has 328 million monthly active users, according to market researcher Omnicore.)

What he did share is that Pinners are 39% more likely to be active retail shoppers — and when they do, they spend 29% more than people who don’t use the Pinterest app.

A whopping 98% of Pinners says they try new things they find on it, compared to 71% on social-media platforms, according to Pinterest research

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