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Apple CEO Tim Cook May Be Using The Fancy, A Rival To Pinterest

Tim Cook
Apple CEO Tim Cook at Sun Valley. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

The Fancy is the New York-based Pinterest competitor that is killing it in social commerce.

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It may now have the most powerful business figure in the world—Apple CEO Tim Cook—signed up as a user.

There's an account with the username "timcook" on the service. That's easy to fake. But The Fancy, like Twitter, verifies some high-profile accounts. The timcook account is verified.

CEO Joe Einhorn makes the rounds at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley conference—Allen & Co. is The Fancy's investment bank and also a backer. Two years ago, The Fancy, then known as ThingD, was the cool mystery startup everyone was talking about at Sun Valley.

This year, Apple CEO Tim Cook also attended.

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We emailed Einhorn, who called us back and said he "may have met" Cook at Sun Valley this year.

He also confirmed that his company takes steps to verify the identity of famous users before marking them as verified. But he said he couldn't comment on the account specifically.

"We think the world of Apple and of Tim Cook," said Einhorn.

A lot of famous Internet moguls feel similarly about The Fancy. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is an investor and board member. Path CEO Dave Morin uses the site, as does Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Of course, using the site just indicates that they've signed up and are curious about it—it's not an endorsement per se.) 

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The timcook account doesn't appear to be particularly active. It hasn't "fancy'd," or bookmarked, any interesting objects or followed other users. But it has more than 37,000 followers—an unusually high number.

Einhorn notes—again, without specifically commenting on any user—that people are increasingly using the site to buy things rather than for its social features. Users who just buy things with the service won't show any social activity on their profiles.

Here's a screenshot:

The Fancy page of user timcook
The Fancy
Pinterest Mark Zuckerberg E-Commerce
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