Pinterest has purchased Icebergs, a company that allows creatives to collaborate on projects online. This acquisition, along with a number of new features Pinterest has launched lately, will change how content is curated and utilized within the platform, say industry participants.
Visual discovery platform Pinterest has inked a deal to acquire Barcelona-based start-up Icebergs, a move that will add another dimension to its existing functionality.
Icebergs, established a year ago, offers a private online space for creatives to discover, organize, and collaborate on projects, in the form of images, videos, and other digital content.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. But under the agreement, Icebergs’ two co-founders, César Isern and Albert Pereta, will join Pinterest in San Francisco, while Icebergs’ online service will be shut down, and its existing users will be required to export their projects and files by September 1.
Although Pinterest will not integrate Icebergs’ technology into its platform, industry participants think the acquisition of will still boost Pinterest’s performance as it will bring new talent and a new audience to the company.
“Icebergs provides Pinterest with a new breadth of talent, new audience, and an additional layer of organization,” says Diana Kelter, social strategist at social media agency socialdeviant. “With the help of new talents from Icebergs, Pinterest can shift toward an audience that utilizes the platform to inspire a project, and then watch it come to life directly within Pinterest.”
Additionally, the new talents from Icebergs may also help Pinterest build up systems to bring deeper layers of organization within individual boards, says Kelter.
Luke Carrell, strategy director at global social media agency We Are Social, adds that through the acquisition of Icebergs, Pinterest will be able to develop new ways to help users curate content.
“Pinterest’s existing functionalities emphasize a sense of collaborative curation that just doesn’t exist on other platforms,” he notes. “Users and brands have taken notice, so it makes sense that Pinterest would look for ways to expand its offering around that.”
The platform has acquired a number of other start-ups in recent months, including visual search start-up VisualGraph, and some speculate that through these deals, Pinterest is evolving into a discovery platform that may rival Internet search giant Google at some point in the future.
“Anything is possible,” says Carrell. “But it is apparent that Pinterest wants to become more of a world to itself, with broader functionality that goes beyond simple image curation.”
