Pinterest AnalysisLance Paterson

Introduction

• Highly visual sharing system – largely image and video based – for pics, concepts and ideas

• Organised deliberately like an old-school agency “mood board” – lots of stuff, some seemingly random, that all fits together under one topic or tag.

• Some topics are globally set with sub-topics - their user is encouraged and guided but not foisted on users. You can also define any other topic you like by making your own tags.

• 23m UVs as of Aug 2012 and rising – skews overwhelmingly female (83%). Mostly consume but sharing rate is quite high

Cold Open

Cold Open & Signup

• User is immediately presented with a wealth of topics to explore

• Pretty much all of the site’s search and category / item display functionality can be played with without logging in

• Login pushes people towards Facebook and Twitter signup – after all, the site’s about SHARING – with email-only signup as a very small distant third option

• On signup via Twitter or FB, site will then retrieve your avatar (but ask if you want something different). You’ll still have to set:• Pinterest Username• Email Address• Pinterest Password

• Site will also scan your friendlists for anyone you already know on Pinterest and auto-follow those accounts

Figuring out initial interests

Figuring out initial interests

• To help you get started, user is presented with a bunch of random pictures and entries with no tags or text

• These fill up five slots at the base of the page

• The site then determines your first interest boards based on the primary topics these represent. I picked a tower, a dinner table, two cars and a LOLcat.

• As a result, the site thinks I’m interested in architecture (a bit), food (definitely!), love and marriage (wrong) , cars & bikes (yup) and humour (yup). Four out of five ain’t bad.

Figuring out initial interests

Adding more boards…

Whenever you look at a pin that interests you, you have the options of:• repinning that individual pin...• …or following the feed of the person it belongs

to…• …or the individual subject board they pinned

it on.

• So very quickly, your homepage/personal feed starts filling up with the people and things that you like…

Personal feed after a few pins/follows..

Building your first boards

• The next step is to hit the ADD button (though this could be a little more obvious in the setup process, but I digress.)

• You get the following popup…

Building your first boards

• I’ve opted to Create A Board straight off…

• Note that I’m immediately prompted to do two things –• Pick a global category (though you can pick “other”)• Add anyone else I want to be able to add/edit stuff

Building your first board

(Okay, not too much going on here just yet… so let’s ADD some more things. I’m going to Add A Pin…)

Building your first board

Just going to copy and paste an address for Pinterest to scan for me…

Building your first boards

• I can now flip through all the images that Pinterest found on that page, add a description, and choose a board to add it to. It preselects the board I’m currently working on, but I’m not bound to that choice.

This is the resulting pin page..

And what my board looks like so far.

Still looking a bit empty. Let’s have a search…

Some search results…

I can now pin individual items to my board..

Knowing where you are…

Note that when you repin something you like, it also tells you the board it belongs to – and any other popular boards it appears on.

Ten minutes later…http://pinterest.com/audiobootravel/west-coast/

Some notes about sharing…

• Note that a lot of the shares aren’t cross-board – they’re coming in from other sites. (HINT: we need a Pin Button on all our Boo pages. NOW.)

• Pinterest does have a serious spam problem –some scammers, some SEO spammers. But they also have lots of flaggers. Click on the wrong pin and you get…

Pinterest on Mobile…

• Pinterest’s content is neatly replicated on both mobile and app format. Mobile uses a responsive, single-column design that shows off pics to best available width. App uses a non responsive/non rotatable two-column design.

• Functionality is also well replicated on both.

Pinterest API (or not)

• Pinterest does not currently have a publicAPI, but is seeking development partners

• Have already registered for forthcoming private Beta for integrations and looking for a partner contact.

Conclusions

• There’s a lot we can learn from the way Pinterest handles their content on each individual platform.

• We’ll also be able to integrate and share more directly once we get beta…

• …but adding Pin This buttons - certainly on the website – is a straight JS drop and not rocket surgery. Best we get on to it…