Pinterest announced an update that will make the image-sharing social network even more powerful for its users. Since its inception, Pinterest aimed to enable people to share pins based on their interests, and categories. Now pins will be categorized based on their content too.
According to the news, Pinterest has deals with popular websites, to categorize pins for products, movies and recipes according to their content, and providing the most useful text information to go with the image.
Thus, movie pins by Pinterest, are grabbed from sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster and Netflix. Click on a pin, and you are served more details, including ratings, director, and cast.
For recipe pins, Pinterest taps the likes of Martha Stewart, Chobani Yogurt, MyRecipes.com, Better Homes & Gardens, Bon Appétit and many others, to serve up pins with a wealth of details: ingredients, cooking times, serving, dietary information, etc.
Finally, Pinterest enriches the “product pins” with content from Target, Nordstrom, and many smaller retailers, with pricing, availability, and where to buy (updated every day.)
If this wasn’t “pinteresting” enough, whether you like it or not, the network promised to update all of your old pins so they’re more useful, too.
The move makes sense, as Pinterest is finally looking into ways of monetizing content on its network. With over 48 million monthly users, Pinterest is very interesting for brands and retailers. The network now offers developer tools to “make pins richer”, either by adding a few metatags to a site, or by adding the Pin It button to an iOS app and so on. Ecommerce sites should tap these developer tools to make pins of their products more relevant for pinners.
Naturally, this is just the beginning. While these tools are now free of charge, you can soon expect Pinterest to come up with “premium” features for brands. And the options for “rich pins” will eventually expand to other niches, like travel and hospitality, for example.