• Fortune, Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:14 PM

Pinterest has hired Tim Kendall, longtime director of monetization at Facebook, and the man widely credited with helping to turn the social network into a business. While Fortune buries the news in a 2,000-plus-word profile of the popular social network, it knows how significant the news is.

“At this point, businesses can't spend money marketing on Pinterest even if they want to,” it writes. “Targeted ads seem like a no-brainer, and new hire Kendall is sure to have some ideas for how to help companies better reach consumers on the site.” Similar to eBay, Pinterest could also become a platform for would-be entrepreneurs seeking to cash in on their hobbies, Fortune suggests.

Either way, because of its uncanny ability to drive traffic to retail sites, “Over time, Pinterest has the potential to translate more quickly to sales dollars than other social-networking sites.” What is Pinterest’s genius? According to Fortunes, “The site excels at something that's very hard to do on the Web -- help people discover new things. If you can name what you want, after all, Amazon and Google are pretty good tools for helping you find it.”

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