A US firm which helps businesses gain a better understanding of how to utilise one of the world’s fastest growing social networks has based its UK operations in Newcastle.
Seattle-based Socialrithmic has recently launched Pinster to help businesses worldwide better understand the commercial benefits of using the photo-sharing website Pinterest.
Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo- sharing website that allows users to create and manage image collections such as events, interests and hobbies.
Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, “re-pin” images to their own collections or “like” photos.
It is one of the world’s fastest-growing social networks, and is proving to be increasingly important for driving traffic, which results in sales, to e-commerce platforms and retailers.
Dominic Tarn, who heads up Socialrithmic’s UK operations, said the US firm chose Newcastle over the likes of London for its strong start-up ethos and friendly tech community.
“They will be working with UK clients and growing the firm from here,” he said. “This means they’ll be hiring, and it’s quite a coup, a US tech start-up choosing Newcastle over the likes of London, to establish themselves in this country.
“The product is still in its early stages in the US, but users are signing up in America and Europe already.
“My responsibility is to target clients in the UK and Europe from our base here in Newcastle. We’ll be hiring a designer and some interns as the company grows. Think Digital and Orange Bus are the kinds of UK clients we’re hoping to win.
“Pinster informs companies how to get a better return on investment from what they do. They will also gain a better understanding of their target audience.”
Socialrithmic was part of this year’s batch of companies which received up to £100,000 to set up shop in Newcastle as part of the region’s ignite100 digital start-up accelerator.
The US company was founded by former Microsoft Bing data-mining engineers and the team consists of former Microsoft engineers from Seattle, Washington.
Pinterest is ranked as one of the Top 50 most visited US websites according to comScore and ranked by Experian as being the world’s third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter. It has so far raised £62m, which gives it a value of almost £1bn.
For US e-commerce companies the website is effective as an increasingly active part of their marketing, with reports that a Pinterest user is 72% more likely to have found an item to buy on the site than a Facebook user.
