Pinterest names Google president of commerce as CEO

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Dive Brief:

• Following the launch of more virtual shopping features, Pinterest has tapped former Google President of Commerce Bill Ready as its new CEO effective Wednesday, according to a company press release.
• Co-founder and former CEO Ben Silbermann will become the company’s first executive chairman. Silbermann co-founded the platform back in March 2010 with Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra.
• In addition to his previous commerce and payments experience at Google, Ready also worked as COO at PayPal and CEO of Braintree and Venmo. 

Dive Insight:

Pinterest is positioning itself to be a social commerce destination – not just an image-sharing platform to create inspiration boards within.

“In our next chapter, we are focused on helping Pinners buy, try and act on all the great ideas they see. Bill is a great leader for this transition. He is a builder who deeply understands commerce and payments. And he shares our passion for creating a positive corner of the Internet,” Silbermann said in a statement.

Pinterest has steadily been adding virtual shopping features over the past year to its repertoire. The company acquired the artificial intelligence platform The Yes earlier this month, which creates personalized shopping feeds for users based on their inputs for brands, sizes and styles. 

Pinterest added AR try-on home decor features in January for retailers like CB2 and West Elm. It also introduced Shopping List as a feature last June, allowing users to save product pins and get notified of price drops. Last October, it also added Pinterest TV for users to watch live and shoppable videos from creators.

Social media platforms are increasingly looking to social commerce as a growth channel. Snap released the ability for users to share eBay listings on Snapchat, and launched new augmented reality shopping tools in May. Instagram expanded the ability to tag products to all users in April, and held an in-person pop-up shop to celebrate its Shop anniversary in May. Additionally, Twitter launched the Product Drops feature this month, where users can be notified when a seller releases new merchandise.