What was Pinterest originally called?

What was Pinterest originally called? The correct answer is Tote.

Before Pinterest became a visual discovery platform, its founders worked on an iPhone application called Tote. The app was developed by Cold Brew Labs and was designed as a virtual replacement for paper catalogs, gathering product information from online retailers.

Tote struggled partly because mobile payment technology was not yet advanced enough to support convenient purchases on the go. However, users began collecting large sets of favorite products and sharing those collections. This behavior suggested a broader opportunity beyond shopping catalogs.

Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra shifted the company’s focus toward a service where people could create and share collections of many kinds of images and ideas. Evan Sharp later joined the founding team, and the resulting product became Pinterest. “Pinboard” describes the service’s organizing concept, but it was not the original company or app name. Pinterest was the later name adopted for the public product.