Social sharing network Pinterest announced that it has hired two former Apple employees to lead the company's Engineering and Design departments.
The first new hire is Michael Lopp, former Palantir Technologies director of engineering and a key figure in the MAC OS X engineering team. Before working at Apple, Lopp previously help positions at Netscape, Symantec and Borland. He is also an author, maintaining a blog and writing the daily Web comic Jerkcity. Lopp will become Pinterest's Engineering head.
The second new hire is Bob Baxley, former Apple Online Store Director of Design, who served as a leader in Apple's retail and commerce team and also spearheaded the transactional parts of iPhoto and GarageBand. He was previously the design head of Yahoo Answers and lead user interface designer for ClarisWorks. Like Lopp, Baxley is also an author, and is well-known for his book Making the Web Work. Baxley will become Pinterest's Product Design and Research head.
Both Lopp and Baxley worked at Apple for eight years and even spent time working together, with one of their joint projects being the Apple Online Store. At Pinterest, Lopp and Baxley will rekindle their working relationship as the company figures that the two new hires will work closely with each other for future initiatives.
Lopp will lead the Pinterest technical team's focus on product development and scaling the company's system that includes over 30 billion pins, while Baxley will oversee both the research and product design teams which are tasked with creating the interface and experience that Pinterest offers.
The addition of Lopp to the company ends Pinterest's search for the replacement of former head of engineering John Jenkins, who left in December last year to pursue his own startup company.
Showing Pinterest's current focus on its search and discovery programs, Pinterest launched Guided Search back in April. Guided Search is a service which aims to aid users in searching through the massive collection of pins currently on Pinterest. The system is based on user-generated metadata to create categories and sub-categories for search results, making them easier to navigate. Guided Search is designed for the iOS and Android users of Pinterest, as about 75 percent of all Pinterest activities are carried out on mobile devices.
In May, Pinterest raised $200 million in a funding round, increasing the company's total value to $5 billion. The funding round is the company's third in just over a year, with the last one in October raising $225 million. The company will use the raised funds to promote international growth and develop a new advertising program.
