Pinterest is Being Sued by a Friend of One of the Founders Who Claims She Helped Create It

Pinterest must face a lawsuit from a digital marketing strategist who says she helped conceive the social media platform, Judge Richard Seabolt of Alameda County Superior Court ruled on Thursday.

Plaintiff's Claims

Citing a Bloomberg news report, Engadget said that a former friend of one of Pinterest's founders has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming she was involved in the platform's development. Christine Martinez filed a lawsuit against the company in September, alleging that Ben Silbermann and Sciarra, the platform's founders, never paid her for her important contributions.

Martinez claimed that Silbermann requested her to "salvage a failed shopping app" that eventually became Pinterest. The digital market strategist claims, among other things, to have created a marketing strategy to recruit bloggers to promote the platform and features connected to Pinterest's Boards.

Martinez, according to the Engadget report (via New York Times), never had a formal contract or agreement in place with Pinterest. Martinez counters that based on her conversations with Sciarra and Silbermann, the agreement was implied.

She claimed that the co-founders of Pinterest lacked any marketing or product development experience with women. Former lifestyle blogger and founder of an e-commerce firm Martinez said she was willing to assist friends.

Pinterst Filed a Motion To Dismiss the Case

Martinez sued the company in September, and in December, Pinterest submitted a motion to dismiss the case. Martinez's claims, according to Pinterest, are past their statute of limitations because they are too old. However, Seabolt ruled that Martinez "sufficiently alleges" that the parties' deferred pay agreement and her claims are related to the company's 2019 IPO.

However, the judge rejected claims of conversion and unfair business practices while describing the IPO as a "transformative event" that would result in the duty to pay her, as per Bloomberg report.

Latest Update About Pinterest's Business

According to a news story by TechCrunch, The Yes, an AI-powered fashion shopping service founded by e-commerce veteran and former Stitch Fix COO Julie Bornstein and technical co-founder Amit Aggarwal, was acquired by Pinterest as the company aims to enhance the online shopping experience on its platform.

The Yes, a company founded in 2018, developed a customized daily shopping feed that recognizes a user's style while they browse hundreds of fashion retailers.

Terms of the deal were not made public, but according to the company, the acquisition would help Pinterest create a new strategic organization to assist drive its shopping efforts, including the creation of services for both consumers and retailers.

All of this might be related to Pinterest's expanding efforts to draw creators to its platform, who now post videos and livestreams intended to persuade Pinterest users to buy the items they're recommending, as per the report of TechCrunch. Users may find more things when they surf Pinterest's feed after watching content, and the algorithm would get smarter as users browsed.