Pinterest has been an invite only website since its launch to encourage people to invite their friends and mix with them among the site. This was a great way to create socializing within the website as once your friends are invited, they feel honoured to be invited to Pinterest and will sign up, becoming your friends on the site in the process.

The issue with this however is it has created a 90% population of women on the site. Women have invited all their friends, who are usually more likely to be women, and then their friends have invited more, leading to a low amount of males on the website.

The site is now fully open for registration to the public, allowing all the males in the world who have not yet been invited to get involved.

It has become a massive website, reaching heights of 10 million users active on the site in just 9 months of launch. Thats what happens when a full site goes viral and the current members can send as many invites as they like to their contact lists.

The site is still fairly new, technically still a startup even though it is one of the biggest websites in the world, meaning they have not yet come up with a proper commrecial plan to start making some big money. We can expect to see this soon now they have opened the doors to the world and potential investors at the same time who could give them that extra push they need to get what they want from a commercial point of view.

A famous social media analyst stated that the way Pinterest had invites was part of their marking strategy, and could be monetised in one way or another in the near future.

The company has only had one problem, and its a problem most image sites struggle with. Copyright. In February the company had to deal with complaints that copyrighted images were being posted by users. It can be hard to keep control of 10 million users all posting pictures all over the place, but they have plans and measures in place to help against copyrighted material being posted, such as using keywords or the information contained within the image.