Pinterest announces open registration. Invites needed no more.

The first thing that may be popping into your brain is “spam.” After all, what was the point of making Pinterest invite-only? If everybody is vouched for by an existing user, then theoretically any additional user who chooses to spam has to betray the friend who invited him/her.

Let’s just say, at some point somebody got betrayed.

And once there’s a patient zero of spamming, the sanctity of the invite-only system doesn’t exist. That happened a long time ago, at least as early as January 2012. At this point, all the invite-only system does is slow down Pinterest’s growth.

So I like the new set-up.

Twitter/Facebook sign-up still required, so it’s not totally open season for spam. Still a bit of friction.

Guess the one thing that would make me happier. Animated .gif support.

One day. #dreams

So nice how he presented his slides in sequence. Temporary death to the gallery!

yongfook:

In a previous startup we went from 0 to around 500,000 users.

In this world of 800 million user social networks that might not sound like much - but our business was e-commerce, where there is a significant and explicitly calculable ARPU.

An audience of 500,000 people who you are selling to directly is an incredibly valuable asset, something that a multi-million dollar business can thrive off. These slides explain some of the ways you can get to 500,000 users based on my experiences in this business and others.

This presentation is also available on Speakerdeck.

This presentation is also available on Speakerdeck.

(Source: yongfook)