Pinterest value jumps by 50% following latest round of fundraising

PanARMENIAN.Net - Social networking site Pinterest has seen its value jump by more than 50% to $3.8bn following its latest round of fundraising, BBC News reports.

The three-year old company, which is a virtual scrapbook, said it had raised $225mln from a group of investors led by Fidelity Investments.

Earlier this year it had raised $200mln, valuing the firm at $2.5bn.

Pinterest said it plans to use the new funds to further expand internationally and develop its mobile services. It is also looking at ways of monetizing its service, which has yet to generate any revenue.

"We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that's dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday," Pinterest co-founder and chief executive Ben Silbermann said in a statement. "This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively."

Earlier this month the firm started testing the use of 'promoted pins' as a possible form of advertising. The San Francisco-based company recently set up offices in Britain, France and Italy. It aims to be operating in 10 more countries by the end of the year.

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting (AKA 'pinning') images or videos to their own or others' pinboards (i.e. a collection of 'pins,' usually with a common theme) and browsing what other users have pinned. Using a visual emphasis, the social network is very much focused on the concept of a person's lifestyle, allowing you to share tastes and interests with others and discover those of likeminded people. The social network's goal is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting." Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet.

As with most other social networks, users can perform standard social networking functions such as following the boards of their friends, liking and commenting on other users' pins, re-pinning content to their own boards, sharing others' pins on Facebook and Twitter or via email, and even embedding individual pins on their website or blog.