Pinterest has been around for 4 years now and now they are taking their baby step towards monetizing. Yes, they will be putting their years of effort to leverage on ROI and mobile usage.
The first tests of ads will be in the categories feeds and search results. For instance you search for "Men's Fashion", you might see a store selling men's clothing nearby - like how Promoted Tweets work.
A lot of comments from netizens spurred from this, mostly negative. Some said that Pinterest just signed their death wish and some say that this is goodbye for them using the pinning platform. A few number of neutral responses say that as long as Pinterest will do it in a "not intrusive and spammy" way, they have no problem against it.
It is a fact that successful platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Dropbox start with free service before they introduced Twitter Promoted Tweets, Facebook Ads and Dropbox Plans. Little do most people know that in the end, it is all just business - and all business have costs to carry on their shoulders. Having to make an exceptional innovation and exquisite UI/UX platform should not be expected "free all the time" and/or there's always a price to pay for something "more".
At the end of the email it was signed by a guy named "Ben" who is obviously represented by Ben Silbermann, the CEO of Pinterest.
