Can Pinterest succeed as the ‘un’-social network?

In this Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018, photo Evan Sharp, Pinterest co-founder and chief product officer, poses for a photo in his office beside a wall of pinned photos he has taken at Pinterest headquarters in San Francisco. “Social media is about sharing what you are doing with other people,” said Sharp. “Pinterest isn't about sharing. It's mostly about yourself, your dreams, your ideas you want for your future.” (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

NEW YORK: If Instagram is the dream vacation you’ll never go on and Facebook is Thanksgiving with too many relatives arguing over politics, Pinterest is sitting on the couch by yourself, watching a home-improvement show and absent-mindedly flipping through an old issue of Gourmet magazine. 

Pinterest has long shunned being labelled a social network. Because of that, it doesn’t push users to add friends or build connections the way rivals have done to grow quickly. But while this has meant that Pinterest is smaller than, say, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the service has also avoided much of its peers’ troubles around misinformation, hate and abuse.