8 ms·

Pinterest to price IPO below last valuation

70 points by donohoe 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago
Exactly no one is surprised.
electricityUser 8y ago
The website that made Google image search suck does an IPO?
- cgarvis 8y ago
  adding `-pinterest` to your search terms makes it suck less.
  - Shivetya 8y ago
    would be nice to have the option to always black list certain sites? is there a browser add on which would facilitate that?
    - zeepthee 8y ago
      Yes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-blocklist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc... I used that for w3schools before.
      - colejohnson66 8y ago
        W3schools’ quality has really improved. I don’t get the hate for it
- ishan1121 8y ago
  Do people really use Pinterest? I never found their website useful.
  - o10449366 8y ago
    These comments are boring and increasingly common on HN. On almost every discussion of Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook you'll find comments like these expressing faux incredulity at the prospect that some users find these services valuable. You may not be the target market, but it really isn't difficult to understand why they're popular with minimum effort. At best, these comments convey laziness and an unwillingness to understand other perspectives. At worst, they're often used to assert moral superiority over others that use such "useless" products and services.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      True it was a lazy comment. But we can easily imagine a world without these services, and it would be almost entirely better. That takes no effort at all to understand that point of view either.
      - o10449366 8y ago
        I couldn't disagree more. Given how popular these services are they're obviously providing some form of utility otherwise they wouldn't be used. Regardless of what kind of utility these users derive, I'm betting the vast majority of them would disagree with your claim. You may think the world would be "better" (whatever that means), but I'm guessing you don't use these services so what difference does it make to you?
        slackfan 8y ago
        Somebody owns stock in Pintrest.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Yeah heroin gets used too. There seems to be a cognitive gap here: on one hand acknowledging these widespread comments from folks with no use for these services, and then insistence that everybody uses them. At the risk of repeating myself, its trivially easy to see the point of view that they're not useful to a large portion of humanity. The irony is thick. What difference does it make to me? Nothing, except pointing out contradiction. A hobby of mine.
jak92 8y ago
Get out at any price?
andy_ppp 8y ago
Visual note taking has so much potential, I’m really not sure how Evernote and Pinterest cornered the market and ruined it at the same time. Same with LinkedIn, these players somehow break their whole spaces.
- burtonator 8y ago
  Lack of competition... I'm trying to revamp things on the Evernote side but in a different way. https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ We're making good progress and have a GREAT hacker user base but working to take it to the masses. The next goal is to launch it on product hunt in 1-2 weeks. We're also adding sharing and improving our web and mobile apps which is super important to getting adoption. It's also Open Source and we're going to raise money soon with a 'kickstarter' style campaign to ask the community to fund continued development. I want to build a platform that respect user rights and isn't trying to lock up the users data in a proprietary platform. The reason it's called "Polar" is that it's designed to 'freeze' your knowledge in a safe place. Safe being that it's Open Source and based on web standards. I'm going to have it based on a .org style non-profit sort of like Wikimedia / Wordpress.org but also a for-profit company which has commitments to the non-profit which funds it in perpetuity.
  - andy_ppp 8y ago
    Less salesy and better design aesthetics would be my advice...
temdbej 8y ago
Why couldn’t Instagram build a feature that lets you build boards of pinned posts from other users?
- o10449366 8y ago
  You can save posts on Instagram, so you're technically allowed a single "board". I could see this feature being expanded in the future, though.
  - landonxjames 8y ago
    I believe Instagram now lets you save them in arbitrarily titled collections. I think the only missing functionality is sharing them with other users.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
darkxanthos 8y ago
This isn’t actually the title of the article. Should this be renamed?
- donohoe 8y ago
  It was the original title when I submitted it. It appears it was updated after submission.
rchaud 8y ago
Ah Pinterest, strip-mining the incredible library of images across all of the Internet, then converting them all into 200px thumbnails, and replacing the original search results with your own, all in the noble quest to serve more ads to more eyeballs. This is increasingly what passes for a billion dollar company in SV today. Aggregating other peoples stuff and putting yourself in the middle to skim a bit off the top.
- jasonsync 8y ago
  I don't get why Google hasn't cleaned up the Pinterest spam in Google Images: - Using Google Images search for: fun crafts. - Results loaded with Pinterest hosted images. - Visit any of those Pinterest hosted image pages - The page on Pinterest may not include the image you are looking for (anymore) - Or the Pinterest page may be an intermediary page that links to some other external website with the original image (Google doesn't give the original website the traffic) - After 5 seconds you start getting prompts to create a Pinterest account
  - devoply 8y ago
    Maybe they or their executives have some investments tied up in Pintrest. But yeah I hate landing on a Pintrest page for search results. It's like the mid-2000s all over again.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      My bet is simply that Pinterest managed to game Google's algorithm while technically doing nothing wrong, so there's little Google can do other than explicitly blacklist them - which they obviously won't do.
  - ssnistfajen 8y ago
    If I can at least see the image I looked for in the Pinterest link, then I wouldn't have hated it as much. However the reality is every Google image search click to Pinterest is wasted time because the actual image is pretty much never there.
- 8y ago

70 points by donohoe 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago

Exactly no one is surprised.

electricityUser 8y ago

The website that made Google image search suck does an IPO?

cgarvis 8y ago
adding `-pinterest` to your search terms makes it suck less.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  would be nice to have the option to always black list certain sites? is there a browser add on which would facilitate that?
  - zeepthee 8y ago
    Yes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-blocklist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc... I used that for w3schools before.
    - colejohnson66 8y ago
      W3schools’ quality has really improved. I don’t get the hate for it
ishan1121 8y ago
Do people really use Pinterest? I never found their website useful.
- o10449366 8y ago
  These comments are boring and increasingly common on HN. On almost every discussion of Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook you'll find comments like these expressing faux incredulity at the prospect that some users find these services valuable. You may not be the target market, but it really isn't difficult to understand why they're popular with minimum effort. At best, these comments convey laziness and an unwillingness to understand other perspectives. At worst, they're often used to assert moral superiority over others that use such "useless" products and services.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    True it was a lazy comment. But we can easily imagine a world without these services, and it would be almost entirely better. That takes no effort at all to understand that point of view either.
    - o10449366 8y ago
      I couldn't disagree more. Given how popular these services are they're obviously providing some form of utility otherwise they wouldn't be used. Regardless of what kind of utility these users derive, I'm betting the vast majority of them would disagree with your claim. You may think the world would be "better" (whatever that means), but I'm guessing you don't use these services so what difference does it make to you?
      - slackfan 8y ago
        Somebody owns stock in Pintrest.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Yeah heroin gets used too. There seems to be a cognitive gap here: on one hand acknowledging these widespread comments from folks with no use for these services, and then insistence that everybody uses them. At the risk of repeating myself, its trivially easy to see the point of view that they're not useful to a large portion of humanity. The irony is thick. What difference does it make to me? Nothing, except pointing out contradiction. A hobby of mine.

jak92 8y ago

Get out at any price?

andy_ppp 8y ago

Visual note taking has so much potential, I’m really not sure how Evernote and Pinterest cornered the market and ruined it at the same time. Same with LinkedIn, these players somehow break their whole spaces.

burtonator 8y ago
Lack of competition... I'm trying to revamp things on the Evernote side but in a different way. https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ We're making good progress and have a GREAT hacker user base but working to take it to the masses. The next goal is to launch it on product hunt in 1-2 weeks. We're also adding sharing and improving our web and mobile apps which is super important to getting adoption. It's also Open Source and we're going to raise money soon with a 'kickstarter' style campaign to ask the community to fund continued development. I want to build a platform that respect user rights and isn't trying to lock up the users data in a proprietary platform. The reason it's called "Polar" is that it's designed to 'freeze' your knowledge in a safe place. Safe being that it's Open Source and based on web standards. I'm going to have it based on a .org style non-profit sort of like Wikimedia / Wordpress.org but also a for-profit company which has commitments to the non-profit which funds it in perpetuity.
- andy_ppp 8y ago
  Less salesy and better design aesthetics would be my advice...

temdbej 8y ago

Why couldn’t Instagram build a feature that lets you build boards of pinned posts from other users?

o10449366 8y ago
You can save posts on Instagram, so you're technically allowed a single "board". I could see this feature being expanded in the future, though.
- landonxjames 8y ago
  I believe Instagram now lets you save them in arbitrarily titled collections. I think the only missing functionality is sharing them with other users.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

darkxanthos 8y ago

This isn’t actually the title of the article. Should this be renamed?

donohoe 8y ago
It was the original title when I submitted it. It appears it was updated after submission.

rchaud 8y ago

Ah Pinterest, strip-mining the incredible library of images across all of the Internet, then converting them all into 200px thumbnails, and replacing the original search results with your own, all in the noble quest to serve more ads to more eyeballs. This is increasingly what passes for a billion dollar company in SV today. Aggregating other peoples stuff and putting yourself in the middle to skim a bit off the top.

jasonsync 8y ago
I don't get why Google hasn't cleaned up the Pinterest spam in Google Images: - Using Google Images search for: fun crafts. - Results loaded with Pinterest hosted images. - Visit any of those Pinterest hosted image pages - The page on Pinterest may not include the image you are looking for (anymore) - Or the Pinterest page may be an intermediary page that links to some other external website with the original image (Google doesn't give the original website the traffic) - After 5 seconds you start getting prompts to create a Pinterest account
- devoply 8y ago
  Maybe they or their executives have some investments tied up in Pintrest. But yeah I hate landing on a Pintrest page for search results. It's like the mid-2000s all over again.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    My bet is simply that Pinterest managed to game Google's algorithm while technically doing nothing wrong, so there's little Google can do other than explicitly blacklist them - which they obviously won't do.
- ssnistfajen 8y ago
  If I can at least see the image I looked for in the Pinterest link, then I wouldn't have hated it as much. However the reality is every Google image search click to Pinterest is wasted time because the actual image is pretty much never there.
8y ago