

The behavior struck a chord with Silberman, and he shifted the company to building Pinterest, which allowed users to create collections of a variety of items and share them with each other.

Tote users were, however, amassing large collections of favorite items and sharing them with other users. At the time, mobile payment technology was not sophisticated enough to enable easy on-the-go transactions, inhibiting users from making many purchases via the app. Tote struggled as a business, significantly due to difficulties with mobile payments. The idea for Pinterest emerged from an earlier app created by Ben Silberman and Paul Sciarra called Tote which served as a virtual replacement for paper catalogs. It is operated by Pinterest, Inc., based in San Francisco. The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and had 450 million global monthly active users as of December 2022.

This has made it extremely attractive to marketers looking to market to women, especially as Pinterest has a higher conversion rate than other social media apps and a more shopper-friendly experience. What differentiates Pinterest from other social media apps is its female audience, which makes up over 70 percent of all Pinterest users. User growth blossomed thereafter, going from 49 million in February 2013 to 70 million in July of the same year. Pinterest dropped the policy in August 2012, just before launching an Android app.

This quick expansion came despite the fact Pinterest had an invite-only registration policy, which was the norm at the time.
