Pinterest Gaining Momentum

CEO Ben Silbermann announced that users had contributed more than 30 billion Pins since the service was founded, a number that has grown by nearly 50 percent in the past six months alone. Users have also created more than 750 million boards in that time.

That growth has stemmed, in part, from the introduction of Related Pins, something the company released about a year ago. Nowadays more than 90 percent of Pins have Related Pins connected to them, and the number of people who repin Related Pins has grown by 20 percent.

Silbermann compared Pinterest to curation that already exists elsewhere in the world. Specifically, how collections on Pinterest are like curated art in museums, articles and photos in magazines, and collections of clothing at a retail location.

As Pinterest has grown up, it’s sought to provide a lot more information about the things its users are Pinning. For food,it introduced the ability to add full recipes. And just a few months ago, Pinterest released Place Pins.

“Boards themselves aren’t just containing images, they’re containing objects,” Silbermann said. “When you see a movie on Pinterest, it’s likely to have the actor and the director.”

In March, Pinterest said that 75% of its traffic was coming from its native mobile apps. And previously it announced that mobile traffic grew 50% in 2013. eMarketer now pegs Pinterest at 40 million monthly users in the U.S., an audience big enough to drive serious ad revenue, and that doesn’t seem to include mobile.

Pinterest Changes Coming

This is taken from Pinterest engineers as they talk about possible API changes.

As we focus on building a great user experience for the tens of millions of existing Pinners, it’s equally important to engage and retain new Pinners through the new user experience (NUX).

We recently rebuilt our new user experience and created a new framework to power it. Through the process, we determined the best content to show that would educate without overwhelming. Here you’ll learn how we arrived at a NUX that performs significantly better than the previous experience across all of our core engagement metrics.

Rethinking NUX from the ground up

We started by conducting qualitative and quantitative research to better understand new Pinners. The user experience research team interviewed a group of inactive Pinners to understand major pain points, while the data team analyzed a large sample of existing Pinners and determined the core set of actions that would increase the likelihood of a retaining a new person joining the site.

After looking at the insights and iterating on dozens of versions, we gathered new learnings about retaining new Pinners:

Demonstrate a simple value proposition that clearly shows off utility. A Pin is our primary value proposition so we immediately educate the person about how Pins work, and their value.

Actualize the value proposition immediately. Searching and discovering Pins is a core feature, so immediately following the Pin step, we give education on how to find and save interesting Pins.

Educate new Pinners at their own pace. The previous Pin and Search steps are mandatory for new Pinners because we’ve found they lead to increased long term engagement. However, if the Pinner doesn’t seem to get it the first time we’ll gently re-educate them on subsequent visits. For example, if he or she still hasn’t saved a Pin on their second visit, we’ll provide reeducation, and conduct the same process for board creation, following, and other features.

Encourage immediate action. Understanding what it means to Pin early substantially increases the likelihood of retaining the new Pinner. He or she will get a simplified experience where Pinning is highlighted and other advanced features are hidden, until they save their first Pin. We call this the First Pin Experience (more on that below).

After becoming active for the first time and saving a Pin, the Pinner will graduate to a richer experience.

The need for a framework

The updated NUX is a multi-session experience that differs based on Pinner state such as what they’ve done, how long they’ve seen an experience, etc. Therefore we needed a system that could control what the Pinner experiences based on those variables. We also needed a way to easily run experiments to test different NUX steps, messaging, and educational units.

Pinterest Begins Rolling Out New Site Design

The link to the full story is here

After a three-month test period with select members, Pinterest announced Monday that it will begin rolling out a new site design to the rest of its 48 million+ users.

The design changes are relatively subtle. In the newsfeed, amount of space bordering pins has been reduced to allow for larger images and a cleaner layout. Profile pages have likewise been condensed to show more pins in less space.

Beyond the cosmetic changes, Pinterest has also added a host of discovery features. When you look at a pinned image or video, you can now see pins from the same board on the right-hand side so that you don't have to leave the page you're on to browse (see below). You can also explore pins from the same source (i.e., website), and see what "people who pinned this also pinned."

These features are only available on the desktop for now, but will soon be rolled out to Pinterest's iOS and Android apps, says Jason Wilson, Pinterest's lead product designer.

Zendesk Hacking Affects Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter Users

The link to the full story is here



Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that affects users of Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Zendesk said that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who have contacted those three websites for support, as well as support email subject lines. Tumblr and Twitter have notified affected users (see below), while Pinterest is expected to the same. A report on Wired says that some customers may have also had their phone numbers revealed, but passwords, password hashes, and encrypted passwords were not part of the breach.

Twitter says no passwords were affected:

Emailing a small percentage of Twitter users who may have been affected by Zendesk’s breach. No passwords involved. zendesk.com/blog/weve-been…

— Support (@Support) February 22, 2013

Here is the email Tumblr sent to users:

Important information regarding your security and privacy

For the last 2.5 years, we’ve used a popular service called Zendesk to store, organize, and answer emails to Tumblr Support. We’ve learned that a security breach at Zendesk has affected Tumblr and two other companies. We are sending this notification to all email addresses that we believe may have been affected by this breach.

This has potentially exposed records of subject lines and, in some cases, email addresses of messages sent to Tumblr Support. While much of this information is innocuous, please take some time today to consider the following:

The subject lines of your emails to Tumblr Support may have included the address of your blog which could potentially allow your blog to be unwillingly associated with your email address.
Any other information included in the subject lines of emails you’ve sent to Tumblr Support may be exposed. We recommend you review any correspondence you’ve addressed to support@tumblr.com, abuse@tumblr.com, dmca@tumblr.com, legal@tumblr.com, enquiries@tumblr.com, or lawenforcement@tumblr.com.
Tumblr will never ask you for your password by email. Emails are easy to fake, and you should be suspicious of unexpected emails you receive.
Your safety is our highest priority. We’re working with law enforcement and Zendesk to better understand this attack. Please monitor your email and Tumblr accounts for suspicious behavior, and notify us immediately if you have any concerns.

Social Media Users Say Pinterest Is as Popular as Twitter

The link to the full story is here



While Facebook reigns supreme in the social media landscape, the latest study by Pew shows users are pinning just as much as they're tweeting.

Twitter attracted 16% of social media users, followed by 15% on Pinterest in 2012. Everyone's favorite pastime is still Facebook, though, raking in a majority of respondents' votes. Tumblr comes in as the least popular with only 6% of people on the site.

The report details who exactly is using these networks, explaining that sites like Instagram appeal more to women, Latinos and African-Americans.

It's no surprise the study finds young adults more interested in social media. An overwhelming 83% are more likely to be on the sites than older demographics. Each network offers distinct services and draws specific audience groups. Image-heavy Pinterest attracts women, adults under 50 and whites. Twitter users tend to be urban residents.

nlike other networks, Pinterest is equally popular with different age demographics; 19% of younger users and people 30 to 49 use the site, and it also yields the largest difference in gender than any other of it social counterparts. Women are five times more likely to be pinning (secret wedding boards, anyone?) than men.

Though Pinterest is catching up in popularity, the percentage of Internet users on Twitter doubled in the past two years.

Pinterest Gets A Makeover

The link to the full story is here




Pinterest, the social media bookmarking site that is pinning its way to the top of social media platforms to vie for a spot next to Facebook and Twitter, has announced on Monday that a redesign will be coming soon!

Now, to all my pinners out there, this doesn’t mean that Pinterest is moving away from the user-friendly tile design that people and brands flocked to originally. Pinterest wants to keep this grid style look because it makes it easy for brands to connect with consumers in a visually appealing way, but they are looking to improve the quality of the content in each pin.

New Navigation and Bigger Images.

Now pinned images will be much larger including the thumbnails. Also when you view a pin, there will be section of related pins to help guide you in your search.

As a marketer, I’m excited to see this movement because it looks like Pinterest could be heading toward “Sponsored” Pins or Boards. Pinterest Sponsored Pins would be highly competitive with Facebook Sponsored Posts simply because of the placement of a Pinterest pin would be optimized for better performance compared to a Facebook Sponsored Post. Although Facebook Sponsored Posts are highly beneficial to your brand, I believe Pinterest Sponsored Pins would receive more traffic.

For marketers and ecommerce sites, this should be on your top stalking lists for you social media strategy.

Pinterest tests new look with bigger pins, restructured navigation

The link to the full story is here



Pinterest is readying a test that will alter the inspirational site with a tweaked navigation, bigger pins, and an overall faster site experience, the company announced Monday.
The experimental Pinterest look will roll out to a small group of people as the startup attempts to help its users get more information about pins they care about, a spokesperson told CNET. The company plans to release the design more widely once it works out the bugs.
Pinterest is a social network for clipping recipes, fashion finds, housewares, and other aspirational digital goods to collections called "boards." The product, which first launched in 2010, had a phenomenal 2012 and ranked as the sixth most popular social network with 27.2 million unique U.S. visitors by year's end, according to Nielsen. Now, the San Francisco-based company is getting ready to mix things up a bit.
With the redesign, Pinterest.com will test its navigational elements contained inside a red-button drop-down menu on the left-hand side that offers members shortcut access to the feed, popular pins, and categories of pins. The structure replaces the current "Following," "Categories," "Everything," and "Popular" links atop the homepage.