While everyone is talking about Facebook IPO, the social media sensation Pinterest is working on to raise more funds so that it can grow internationally.
Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social photo sharing website. Pinterest allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections(i-e as Boards and Pins). (e.g Motivational Quotes Board)
Pinterest.com is popular among women. Time magazine has listed Pinterest in its “50 Best Websites of 2011” column.
Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is going to invest around $100 millions with Pinterest. This new investment will value the Pinterest to $1.5 billion. And, the Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann decide few other individual investors later.
Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten said: “While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining. We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”
Ben Silbermann, co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, said: “Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”
Rakuten will help Pinterest on turning their pretty pictures into purchases.
To date, Pinterest has raised a total of $37.5 million. The current investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.
you can see below an interesting Infographics about Pinterest.
