• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 13, 2016

Although no Facebook, Pinterest is holding its own in the social media and commerce space. Indeed, the pin-based platform has grown to more than 150 million users -- up from around 100 million about a year ago.

To date, users have shared more than 75 billion “ideas,” according to Ben Silbermann, co-founder and CEO at Pinterest.

Yet Silbermann says he is most excited about the diversity of Pinterest’s community. “Over half of people on Pinterest, and 75% of new signups, are from outside the United States,” Silbermann notes in a new blog post.

Moreover, 40% of consumers joining Pinterest are men, which represents a 70% increase year-over-year. The new growth figures come amid speculation that Pinterest is setting the stage for a forthcoming IPO.

Fueling that perception, Pinterest recently brought on Todd Morgenfeld -- formerly VP of finance at Twitter -- as its first chief financial officer, the company announced Tuesday.

Pinterest reportedly expects to rake in $3 billion in revenue in 2018. If accurate, that would be dramatically higher than the roughly $100 million in revenue Pinterest reportedly took in last year.

To drive revenue growth, Pinterest is pushing brands and businesses to set up Promoted Pins. To encourage them, the visual search and sharing network recently began rolling out a new “Promote” button with which brands and businesses can launch Promoted Pin campaigns in as little as nine seconds.

Once Pins have been “promoted,” partners can then review or edit their campaigns using Pinterest’s Ad Manager self-service ad tool. To help businesses create Pins tailored to their particular objectives, Pinterest also recently released a creative best practices guide.

For Pinterest, the change is part of an aggressive effort to sell brands on its potential.

Late last month, the company began giving advertisers new ways to target pinners, based the type of content they like, what they search, and other such indicators.  

As part of the change, the platform recently began inviting advertisers with a confirmed Web site to target users who have shown interest in their Pins. That includes saving one of their pins, clicking on them, or just tapping on one for a closer look.

Pinterest also made improvements to visitor retargeting, which is powered by a new Pinterest tag that identifies 10 events, including when people search, add a product to check out, and make a purchase on a businesses' Web site.

This summer, Pinterest hired Gunnard Johnson to head measurement science and insights. Johnson most recently served as head of quantitative ads research at Snapchat, and, prior to that, was the advertising research director for Google.

A few months ago, Pinterest enlisted Millward Brown Digital to measure the impact of its brand campaigns.