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Pinterest Reinvents Itself to Prove It’s Really Worth Billions
- raldi 11y agoCan someone TLDR what the changes are?
- extrapickles 11y agoTLDR: Made things faster, added culture specific fonts/design and recommendations (eg: US wants are different than Japanese, etc)
- ntonozzi 11y ago> But really, the point is to make Pinterest much bigger by making it less of a big deal—less flashy, easier to use, and more of a utility. They it made it faster and more image focused.
- officialchicken 11y ago> Silbermann helmed the process, bringing his kids by the office on the weekends while he checked in on the team as they raced to transform Pinterest into a sleeker, faster service. At least all the usual management anti-patterns were followed.
- agandy 11y agoIt seems that if Pinterest really wants to appeal to international markets in the way that Facebook and Twitter do, they should be testing on even less performant hardware than an iPhone 4 and iPad 3.
- iNerdier 11y agoWell it's interesting to learn that my iPad 2 and iPhone 4 are 'antiquated' pieces of technology. I figured my dad's 1940s Harley fit that bill but apparently it's not the only one. At least they're trying to do something about marginally older devices, a large proportion of sites I visit at the moment seem to expect an up-to-the-minute change in hardware of everyone viewing them which is frankly insane and that's just web pages.
- coredog64 11y agoI was cleaning the house last night and found that my kids are using the iPad 2 that I bought them as a coaster. I'm not sure what to think of that: Either I'm spoiling them or it is just a great time to be alive.
- edgesrazor 11y agoStep 1 - Don't force me to create an account just to view your boards.
- siegecraft 11y agoAgreed. I actually checked this today to see if it had changed.. nope.
- viperscape 11y agoRemoving your account used to be very difficult too, I wonder if that changed
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoI disagree. Pinterest is different from other social networks in that it is about collecting content. With content being your secret sauce, you don't want to give it away for free. Anyone can bookmark an image, not anyone can find the perfect image. Pinterest gives you that super power.
- choward 11y ago> Pinterest is different from other social networks in that it is about collecting content. How is that any different from other social networks? > With content being your secret sauce, you don't want to give it away for free. Huh? Pinterest didn't even produce the content. > Anyone can bookmark an image, not anyone can find the perfect image. Pinterest gives you that super power. I have no idea what you're trying to say. What super power?
- erikpukinskis 11y agoIt's common, but I still don't like it. I deleted my Facebook last year and it was shocking to me how much "public" content Facebook hides behind a login requirement. The same with Quora, and apparently Pinterest. They make it look like a public page but after you scroll they're like "uh-uh. We need your personal data if you want to see the rest." It really soured me against these sites to see the way they take other peoples' content and lock it behind a wall. I just walk away when I see that stuff now. I miss the old internet that felt more like a public park than an amusement park.
- fweespee_ch 11y ago> Nearly three dozen designers and engineers have spent the past several months tearing out the skeleton of Pinterest’s iOS app and rebuilding it. They’ve rethought its design, down to the font. Silbermann helmed the process, bringing his kids by the office on the weekends while he checked in on the team as they raced to transform Pinterest into a sleeker, faster service. He passed up the McDonald’s hash browns that the engineers ordered, instead pitching in by testing out the new build, surfing the app on an antiquated iPad 3 and iPhone 4 to make sure it worked great even on slower devices. Those are hardly antiquated and this management style should be considered an example to avoid rather than a foolish attempt to impress people with how "hard" the work was, honestly. This sort of thing is for handling outages and true emergencies, not meeting arbitrary deadlines.
- bonniemuffin 11y agoYep, to me this says "do not work here, we work weekends due to poor planning and enjoy grinding our employees into a pulp".
- chrisgd 11y agoVery true, avoid at all costs. I would change your sentence to ". . . grinding our employees into hash browns."
- paulddraper 11y ago...used to fuel the next generation of gullible employees.
- chrisgd 10y agoHash browns are people!
- rhizome 10y agoPresented without comment: three dozen designers over several (let's say 5) months is easily a million dollars.
- a_small_island 11y ago"Silbermann helmed the process, bringing his kids by the office on the weekends while he checked in on the team as they raced to transform Pinterest into a sleeker, faster service. He passed up the McDonald’s hash browns that the engineers ordered" "Which is why Silbermann has been coming in on the weekend. The changes the company is about to unleash will determine whether Pinterest can earn its deca-corn valuation" "And in one central location, a product manager named Adam Barton, who had been tasked with running the code and design overhaul, roped off a line of desks." " “I worked for 42 days straight,” says Barton, whose early experience as a contract negotiator for Google had given him the skills to keep everyone on task. One of his most important jobs: He was the guy who went to McDonald’s every Saturday to pick up the hash browns." "Goodson was excited about a team trip to Vegas to see Calvin Harris. There was also talk of a camping trip, but someone still had to plan it. Silbermann was already looking beyond; the team will take on the Android platform next." How do most people view these parts of the article?
- philovivero 11y agoThe "march of death" method of product development?
- spyspy 11y agoGoing by the diet and extreme hours they obviously have a young group of engineers convinced that their lives should revolve around work.
- turaw 11y agoMy first instinct was to post a message on HN about how yet another company is fetishizing overtime. It's not even productive to work at that pace; IIRC, most if not all people wear down too quickly for that to make sense. If anything, this proves that the management at Pinterest can neither stay on top of their own product nor set deadlines properly. ... all judgment aside, I hope the people working there are doing alright. Hinging your self worth on your work ethic in a company can be exhausting.
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- illumen 11y agoFlagged because this post is spam. It has nagware asking for a subscription blocking the article from being read.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agowhy would you reinvent yourself unless you already knew you weren't worth billions? and how could such a company succeed with any reinvention if they couldn't already succeed? shiterest.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- smegel 11y agoPlease don't post content that is behind paywalls.
- shostack 11y agoThe core Pinterest experience has really been frustrating to me lately, and a lot of it isn't an issue in the Pinterest platform so much as the absolutely horrendous publisher sites that spam Pinterest with images that show up for my searches. When I visit these sites with their clickbait images (in this case, "california style landscaping"), my iPad 2 slows to a crawl as the publishers load their 50 million ad tags. Often times the image I clicked in hopes of seeing a larger version doesn't exist, and is just a tiny thumbnail on what is clearly a site with content from Demand Media that is meant to drive ad impressions. I'd LOVE for Pinterest to do something akin to FB's Instant Articles and control the entire experience (which I'm sure publishers would absolutely hate). If they provided monetization options for publishers like FB does, I could see that being very successful for Pinterest, and a huge improvement in the user experience since they wouldn't be punting people to random websites.
- sbardle 11y agoPinterest is a good bet to succeed if it can integrate social commerce into the platform. A lot of E-commerce is going to be done over social media soon, especially fashion.
- pbreit 11y agoThis is a good story and probably newsworthy. But still can't escape the feeling that it's wholly fed out by the subject.
- dawhizkid 11y agoPinterest jumped the shark