In this modern technological world of emerging ideas - When he launched the site in March 2010, Ben Silbermann defined Pinterest as a 'catalogue of ideas' rather than as a social network.
Why is Ben Silbermann considered a great figure in IT?
Ben Silbermann is an American entrepreneur who founded the popular application Pinterest that allows sharing of photos. Born in 1982 into a family of ophthalmologists. Silbermannn was
raised in Iowa. A brilliant student, he attended the Research Science Institute at MIT, and then the Yale University from where he graduated with a degree in political science. As a young boy, Silbermann had a fascination for collecting dried insects. stamps etc. and pinning them to card boards. It was this hobby that later gave birth to the idea of Pinterest. The site enables users to upload, save, and arrange images or videos that are called 'pins'. Their collection is termed as a 'pinboard'. Users can also browse other pinboards and 'like' them. Prior to the creation of Pinterest in 2010, Silbermann worked at Google on its online advertising group. He left the com-pany shortly after that, and started designing iPhone apps with his college mate Paul Sciarra. This did not work well, and soon the duo, along with their friend Evan Sharp started working on Pinterest. The site was not successful in the beginning, it only had around 10,000 users in the first 9 months. But the following year, it shot into fame, and received media attention.
Why is it said that Pinterest was a major breakthrough in the lives of its founders, Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra?
The co-founder was so passionate about the project that he gave up his lucra-tive job at Google to dedicate fully to the project.
As we know, Pinterest is a personalised image sharing platform that brings together people of similar interests. Users can view, upload, and sort images or 'pins' and can browse others' too. Pinterest does not generate its own con-tent; rather, it draws from many resources around the web. One year after its launch. the site witnessed a tremendous growth, and won the attention of more than 11 million Internet users across the world. In the same year, Pinterest was named one of the '50 Best Websites of 2011' by the TIME magazine. The following year, it won the Webby Award for the best social media app. Today. Pinterest has over 20 million users worldwide. The success turned the co-found-ers into three of the best innovators of their time. According to the Forbes Magazine. Sil-bermann is the 12" richest American entrepreneur under the age of 40, as of 2016. Paul Sciarra, who left Pinter-est in 2012, is now the entrepreneur-in-residence for the venture capital giant Andrees-sen Horowitz.
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