Rakuten, Owner of Aliso Viejo's Buy.com, Grabs Piece of Pinterest

Facebook isn’t the only Silicon Valley social networking company making news, according to a report in Business Week.

On Thursday, the same day Mark Zuckerberg’s company announced it had raised $16 billion in the biggest IPO by a technology company, Rakuten, the Japanese e-commmerce giant that owns the Aliso Viejo-based e-commerce site Buy.com, announced it is leading a group to invest $100 million in the up-and-coming Internet sharing site Pinterest.

The deal gives a valuation of about $1.5 billion to Pinterest, which allows people to share pictures with their friends, comment on those pictures, and more.

It's unclear if Rakuten will be brokering a deal for Pinterest to link with its various e-commerce sites, however, a portion of Pinterest's revenues on the site come from people "pinning" consumer products, clothing, and other items they'd like to purchase, and the site collecting affiliate fees from e-commerce sites when users click through and buy those products.