Pinterest Seeks Investment, Valued At $2.5bn – Report

Pinterest is reportedly in talks to raise financing that would value the social network at between $2 and $2.5 billion.

The Wall Street Journal says that no funding deal has been secured but that investors are attracted to the company’s continued growth and business potential, despite the fact that, like most social media players, it has little or no revenue and is unprofitable.

Pinterest investment

Pinterest, which allows users to ‘pin’ pictures of objects online, has enjoyed huge growth in the last 12 months, with user visits rising from 9 million in December 2011 to 48 million last month. Its last round of financing took place in May 2012, when it raised $100 million, valuing it at $1.5 billion.

The company has often struggled to keep pace with the growing interest from users, but has recently increased its workforce with recruits from the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon and has moved into larger offices in San Francisco.

Now it wants to grow its revenue streams through advertising and sales commissions. Pinterest hopes to build relationships with businesses so that it can take a cut from sales of goods sold through referrals from the site. It has a dedicated team of four people whose job is to interact daily with potential partners.

Data analytics tools will also be introduced so that companies can keep track of their traffic from Pinterest and how users are interacting with the content. One advantage of Pinterest is that content has a longer lifecycle than it does on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

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