• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 19, 2016

Pinterest just overhauled its iOS app, including a more Pin-focused design, additional localization options, and significantly shortened load times. Users’ home feeds should now load up to three times faster, the company promises.

How is that possible? “For each line of code, we built a number of automatic behaviors so we use less memory [and] load Pins in advance,” a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

 “This is one of the biggest engineering undertakings in our history,” she said. “For Pinterest engineers and designers, it means we can move faster on future products with a new framework that automatically scales across devices and languages.”

Speedy load times are now critical to engaging mobile consumers.

Indeed, 63% of news consumers cited fast load times as most important to them, according to a nationally representative survey conducted earlier this year by the Media Insight Project, and funded by the American Press Institute.

Even before this latest update, Pinterest’s business prospects were looking bright. Indeed, the image-based social network 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.

Pinterest is betting its windfall on a successful international expansion. Already, during the first half of 2016, the company is expecting international users to account for more than 50% of its overall audience, a source tells The Wall Street Journal.

Following the lead of Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest recently began inviting every small- and medium-size business in the country to join its self-serve ad platform.

The pin-sharing platform also increased the number of keywords and specific interests that advertisers can sell against.

This year, Pinterest will have 54.6 million domestic users -- up 9% by eMarketer’s count. As has long been the case with the platform, the vast majority of is users (81.2%) are female.

Trying to live up to its $11 billion valuation, Pinterest is still trying to map out a clear monetization strategy.