Pinpuff, a Klout-like startup for Pinterest, launched by a 20-year-old from India, is Los Angeles-bound. Startup studio Science announced Tuesday that it is acquiring the small startup and moving its founder Ammrita Sharma to its California headquarters.
Michael Jones, the former MySpace CEO who launched Science, said Pinpuff came on their radar a few months ago and they were quickly taken with the startup’s thesis and data platform. Jones declined to disclose the terms or value of the deal (which is Science’s first acquisition), but he said the company included just Sharma and a small technical support team in India.
As Science continues to see the power of Pinterest (it’s the second-highest referral network for sales within Science companies), Jones said they want to be able to better understand the influencers within the network, as well as the kinds of businesses that can be created around them. Not only is the startup a great addition in itself, he said, it will be matched up with Science’s internal creative agency HelloSociety and help other Science launches.
“There are certain core assets in Science that we’ll leverage across the platform – this is one of those,” Jones said. “Over time, what you’ll find is that we’ll build more and more businesses that are focused on influencers and leveraging the technology that Pinpuff developed in their algorithms.”
Pinpuff’s algorithms consider a person’s interests on Pinterest, as well as her followers, follower count, pins, repins, comments and likes to calculate a score from below 40 to above 70 (the average is 32). Pinpuff then assigns different monetary values to the score that vary with the category of the content being pinned and awards perks. For brands interested in finding the best people to help market their message on Pinterest, Pinpuff’s model could be very compelling.
According to The Next Web, which profiled Pinpuff in March, 20-year-old Sharma is a self-described Pinterest addict who bootstrapped the company with family support.
In a blog post, Jones wrote, “Now that Pinterest is nearly as ubiquitous as Facebook and Twitter, and other platforms like The Fancy and Svpply are rising through the ranks, we can tap into the technology that Pinpuff has built to create a true gauge of reach – one that goes beyond clicks, page views, and static traffic numbers, one that measures the power of influence.
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