Pinterest (Remember Them?) Is Testing A New Look

The site for "pinning" photographs and other images of interesting objects—think Tumblr, but organized thematically rather than chronologically—is testing out a new look, software engineer Vy Phan reports on the company blog.

The goal of the redesign (click the image to the right to enlarge it) is to make the homepage easier to navigate and to show more related images on the detail pages for a specific pinned image. That, in turn, should mean people spend more time on the site.

Pinterest has plenty of traffic. Its U.S. audience alone has grown from 7 million monthly visitors in December 2011 to 23 million in August to 30 million at the end of last year, according to Compete,com. (It technically didn't open to the general public until August, when it stopped requiring invitations to sign up.)

Pinterest raised $100 million in a round led by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten in May 2012, at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

We don't mean to be rude, but Pinterest hasn't done much with the money.

It made one tiny acquisition, Punchfork, earlier this month.

It moved from a small office in Palo Alto to a giant warehouse building in San Francisco last summer.

It rolled out some mobile apps.

In March of last year, it hired Facebook monetization genius Tim Kendall.

What Pinterest hasn't done is blown anyone away with amazing new features or dropped even of a suggestion of a plan for making money.

So it's great that you redesigned, Pinterest.

Now go earn that valuation!