After doubling its users in February, growth slowed dramatically in March down to 1 million new users or 5% growth. It supposedly has investors and others worried. They shouldn’t be. We’ve seen this before and we’ll see it again, and Pinterest will hit its next big user bump by July.
This is part of the cycle that hot startups almost always have to go through to get to the next level. Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr – all of them experienced a burst of growth that could be attributed to the tech-savvy cutting edgers out there who latch onto new sites and determine if they’re addiction-worthy or not. Once that is established (and it will be soon), the next phase can begin: celebrities and big brands.
For Twitter, it was celebrities first. Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, and others started using Twitter and their fans followed. For sites like Tumblr, it was brands like the Coke and Newsweek that pushed it out to the masses. For Pinterest, it could happen simultaneously.
The next batch of growth will be followed by the dreaded spammer-flood.
Naysayers in tech journalism love to report failure. Pinterest is not on the verge of collapse. The leveling-out of their growth is temporary.
The big test for Pinterest IMHO is going to be whether they can control spam and increase user functionality towards certain aspects of the site, particularly towards follower/following. The site is very well designed and integrated overall, and is fun to use, but without certain controls, the potential is severely limited.