[3] This fee automatically increased by a fraction of a cent for each new user, a system intended to slow the growth of the site, to make enough money to sustain development, and to discourage spammers from joining.

[4] A few months later Cegłowski released an option to save ("archive") copies of bookmarked web pages with a $25 yearly subscription fee, and Pinboard became his full-time job with 1,200 users.

[7] Additional users joined Pinboard in September 2011 after Delicious was acquired by AVOS Systems and relaunched with less of a focus on personal bookmarking features.

The idea being that the extra income would allow for hiring additional staff to take care of infrastructure and user support, while he was free to focus on adding new features.

[24] He has spoken at conferences about his experience running Pinboard, including listening to users from the fandom community[25] and "failing really, really slowly" (working on a project for a long time instead of looking for immediate success).

[26] He also gave a talk about the negative effects of advertising being the economic foundation of the web, as a model that encourages the growth of surveillance.