Pinterest Hits 30 Billion Total Pins, Up 50% In 6 Months

The existence of vogue shows that there is a demographic who likes to flip through nice pictures. Sometimes they dog-ear the pictures to come back later and look again. People like to leave the magazine lying around their place as a social indicator that they are interested in fashion, and they like to mark which bits of that fashion they're interested in. That's pinterest in a nutshell.

Now go to any magazine rack. There are are broad range of these niches. It's not about replicating a magazine, it's about understanding what purpose that magazine exists for. Is it interesting articles? Wanted ads? Industry information? The purpose and niche of the information is what people want. These all can be more innovatively delivered and shared than a glossy magazine dropped on a doorstep.

Pinterest takes this and adds a mix of dynamic wishlists and storefronts to it - with alerts of price drops, and conceivably price and currency calculation for an international audience down the line.

I generally hate the term, but Pinterest also acts as a more curated lookbook, since you can choose whom you follow to compose your own magazine-like feed.

I don't mean to give the impression that I have any idea about the profitability of Pinterest, because they are hauling a truckload of static content - on Django, to boot.