Photo-sharing website has around 60 million users.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The popular social networking site Pinterest has launched a Hindi version, which it hopes will entice more India-based users to join the rapidly expanding photo-sharing website.
Launched in March of 2010, Pinterest was created as an online bulletin board, which people could post pictures, videos, and other interesting links to that others could then see, and share for themselves.
In just four years, the site has rapidly expanded throughout the world, with translated versions in 25 languages besides English, and around 60 million active users (called “pinners” because they “pin” their interests onto their online boards). In October of last year, the company was valued at $3.8 billion; it is still privately held.
Now, the company has set its sights on the Indian subcontinent, hoping to capitalize on the country’s large population and rapidly growing number of active Internet users. Last year, India ranked 10th in terms of the countries with the highest number of Pinterest users, with the US leading all other nations by several million. The country already has a substantial number of users on both Twitter and Facebook – with the latter site saying that India will take over the US in terms of number of users within the next year or two – and Pinterest is not looking to be left behind.
The company announced that they had launched its website’s Hindi iteration on March 20, saying “We hope this helps Pinners from India and other Hindi speakers around the world not only to share what inspires them but also to explore all of their unique interests in one place.”
In an interview with DNA India, Pinterest international head Beryl Menezes explained that Pinterest can co-exist, and even surpass, Twitter and Facebook within the competitive Indian marketplace because of how fundamentally different it is.
“Pinterest is fundamentally different than other sites. We’re giving regular people the power and the tool to organize the world’s information around their own interests,” said Menezes. “Most other social sites are about the past […] Pinterest is one of the few, if not only, services that is about the future.”
There is no word yet on whether Pinterest will continue its expansion by offering versions of its social network in regional languages, too, such as Tamil and Punjabi. Facebook already offers its mobile app in nine Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com