Pinterest introduces new features for business users

Pinterest rolled out free tools and resources for businesses on Wednesday as it continues to explore ways of moving towards monetizing the site.

In what looks like a precursor to the launch of paid products somewhere down the road, Pinterest announced details of new tools for businesses on Wednesday.

“We want to help more businesses provide great content on Pinterest and make it easy to pin from their websites,” the San Francisco-based social networking company wrote in a post on its blog, adding, “Today, we’re taking a first step toward that goal with some free tools and resources.”

Companies are now invited to open a business account on Pinterest – before now there was just one type of account for all users – with its own specific terms and conditions, which mean the platform can now be officially used for commercial purposes. This is certain to result in a boost in interest from businesses, as before now anyone creating a Pinterest account had to agree not to use the site for explicit marketing. This goes some way to explaining why, in a survey conducted over the summer, only seven percent of companies questioned said they had a presence on Pinterest, while 44 percent said they had no interest at all in using it.

Businesses already on Pinterest can easily convert to a business account by clicking on the ‘convert your existing account’ button here.

Features

A Pinterest business account allows companies to sign up with the name of the company (as opposed to first-name-last-name as before) and go through what Pinterest calls “an optimized user flow” that enables new members to verify that the business owns the website on the Pinterest profile so visitors can “more easily find the business they want in search results”.

It also helps users to add a Pin It button, Follow button, Profile widget, or Board widget “to get more engagement from pinners and traffic back to your site.” Holders of a business account will also receive information on upcoming features “that will provide more powerful ways of reaching and understanding your audience on Pinterest.”

Case studies

If a company is in two minds about whether to open a Pinterest account, the social networking firm is encouraging it to check out new pages showing case studies and the like, which explain how businesses are already making use of the site.

Matt Wurst, director of digital communities at digital agency 360i, told Adweek that Pinterest’s launch of business accounts was “a symbolic first step toward understanding the value that brands can have leveraging [Pinterest’s] platform to connect with consumers.”

He added that the move would likely result in the roll out of paid-for options for businesses to highlight their Pinterest profiles and wares to users.

Pinterest has been gathering members fast since it ended its invitation-only model in August. On top of that, the site, which launched in March 2010, broke into the top 50 chart of most visited US websites for the first time in September with more than 25 million visitors during that month, according to research firm comScore.

Visitor numbers have also been boosted with the recent launch of free apps for Android devices and Apple’s iPad.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Pinterest gets private, adds ‘Secret Boards’ for personal projects and shopping lists

Tired of everyone repinning your found photos off the Web? Pinterest will now let you make secret boards to shield public eyes from your precious projects.

Since its inception and wide-spread success, Pinterest users have been using the site to collect every visual thing they enjoy from the Web. These photos, videos, and snippets are also grouped into categories, earning Pinterest notorious popularity with brides-to-be and obsessive window shoppers. However, until today, users were unable to lock their curated boards from the world, making it difficult for Christmas shopper to save gift ideas for a later date without the possibility of being discovered by the future recipients. Thankfully, “Secret Boards” will change all that.

Starting today, Pinterest users can create up to three secret boards to use for the holidays – or any other party planning ideas and personal projects that need total confidentiality. At the bottom of your Pinterest profile, users should see an option to add a Secret Board, or add a new one and turn the “Secret” button on. With these limitations set, only you will be able to see these particular boards – unless you invite others to pin with you. If you are invited from someone else to contribute to their Secret Board, this will not count against your three board limit.

Pinterest notes, however, that Secret Boards will only be available on new projects since others may have already re-pinned content from your past public ones. Users will have the option to make their Secret Boards public at a later time by simply turning the “Secret” button off, so you can share that project you’ve been stealthily working on or make room for more secrets ahead.

The new update also comes to mobile versions of Pinterest on both iOS and Android, so expect an update soon if you haven’t received it already. If you’re not seeing Secret Board options just yet, hang tight. The company says this new feature is gradually rolling out and should be available site-wide “very soon.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Curalate’s Promote tool takes the pain out of Pinterest contests for marketers and users

Curalate launches its Promote promotion module today to solve the pain points of running contests on a visual social network like Pinterest.

Pinterest is every social media marketer’s dream come true. Still, it’s something of a misunderstood tool, not to mention that there are few resources available to brands to help with their campaigns. Today Curalate, a social media monitoring and analytics service for image-based marketing, is solving that pain point with the launch of “Promote.” Brands can now take the guess work out of hosting contests and promotions on Pinterest, while tracking how well the campaigns are doing.

The inherent problem with creating an analytics platform to track the virality of pins on Pinterest is due to the image-based nature of the network. What brands want to know is, “What’s my most popular product on Pinterest, and in what color is it popular?” But the answer to that isn’t as simple as it seems. “That’s a very difficult question to answer for a brand today,” says Curalate CEO and co-founder Apu Gupta.

Tracking the comments and text accompanying a pin is unreliable. When a Pinterest user talks about an image that they’ve pinned, Gupta explains, most won’t say “I love this sweater from JCrew.” They’ll say “I love this sweater.” And you might think that URLs are a way for a brand to track pins, but you’d more often be wrong than right. If a user has pinned a scarf from a catalog page feating a cornucopia of scarves in 10 colors, it wouldn’t be possible to figure out algorithmically what color scarf has been pinned from that page.

This is where Curalate comes in, and it gets interesting. Curalate tracks where the images are being shared on the visual social network from pins to repins. Its robust analytics platform is powered by a sophisticated algorithm that examines every pixel in a pinned image, and matches that image to a database of images to determine what type of product was pinned by a Pinterest user. “We look at several million images daily and compare that to billions of images that we already know about,” says Gupta.

Promote is a new product feature launched today by Curalate. The product combines Curalate’s analytics technology with Promote to offer brands a frictionless way for creating and running promotional contests using Pinterest. Without a service like Curalate, Pinterest contests are a complicated ordeal; Gupta says they are broken. “The way that brands try to run these contests places a lot of burden on the consumers.” The contest process even for us, when Gupta described the process was overwhelming. To submit an entry for a Pinterest contest, participants may be asked to name their board in a specific way, hashtag pins, and pin multiple pins. Once that’s done, participants typically are required to email the brands with the location of their pins. It’s a logistical nightmare for both contest participants and the brand hosting the contest.

Gupta pointed us to a case study that represented Curalate’s capabilities during the beta testing phase with its client, Carnival Cruise. During an 11-day entry period, Carnival Cruise saw a fourfold increase in followers, 700 percent boost in traffic to its site, and 18,000 email opt-ins (45 percent of entrants).

Pinterest, compared to Facebook and Twitter, is still a fledgling social network with just an estimated 12 million users (as of May 2012). But a recent study by BizRate Insights sheds light on the power that it packs as a key driver for commerce. It’s the fourth largest driver of traffic, and 70 percent of users are on Pinterest to figure out what to purchase. Just 17 percent of Facebook users could state that as a reason for using Facebook. And 43 percent use Pinterest to keep up with brands and retailers, compared to just 24 percent of Facebook users. For this reason Pinterest is an enticing marketing platform for brands looking to sell their services or products.

Giving the interest in photo-sharing lately (Instagram is quickly becoming a hub for marketers) Gupta reveals to us that Pinterest is just one platform that the company is working with at the moment, and hopes to expand its service to other visual social media marketing channels in the near future.

 You can view an example of a Curalate Promote contest below:

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

How To Find and Get A Job Using Pinterest

The website Pinterest is all the rage among the social networking faithful these days. As its name might suggest the site works like a virtual pin-up board, allowing users to create boards for just about anything a. The social aspect comes into play when other users then re-pin items of interest and the chain of sharing is created. In this way certain things can go viral and gain a much larger following than they might on a regular site where users browse with little interaction. And it’s because of this that the issue of how to use Pinterest to look for a job became so important.

Flickr image courtesy of methodshop.com

Before deciding on how to use Pinterest in your job search one must evaluate where they are in that search. You can’t figure out how to use such a rapidly growing and involved website without first knowing what you want to get out of it. Job seekers can use Pinterest to narrow down their field of interest, build up a portfolio for prospective bosses or even figure out the best way to present themselves at potential interviews.

See Also: Using Pinterest To Find New Things To Enjoy

The beauty of Pinterest is that information can easily be found on just about anything often when it’s least expected. If a job seeker is trying to figure out exactly what they’re interested in, it’s as easy as picking a Pinterest board category and browsing through. Closer inspection may reveal more discussion about the topic.

For those wishing to work in fields that lend themselves well to being photographed and shared, Pinterest is a great place to first start developing a portfolio. Jobs such as design, photography or fashion can all be displayed on Pinterest. Someone’s best work can be posted to relevant boards and the web address given on resumes for prospective employers to check out. This provides a cost-effective alternative to developing an entire portfolio websites, especially for those just starting out in their careers. And the more people like and re-pin those items the more it shows off the benefit of a skill to prospective employers or clients who may be looking and gauging interest.

Flickr image courtesy of Bunches and Bits {Karina}

Pinterest is a great resource for killing time and browsing through vivid photographs to share with the world. But for those on a mission to secure a new job, no matter what the field is, this growing social networking site is also a helpful resource. By knowing how to use Pinterest to its full potential someone can find a new career field, show off their skills in that field and be on their way to a new job in no time.

Tags: Pinterest, Pinterest Job Search, Pinterest Jobs

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Interest in Pinterest: Virtual pinboard site breaks into top 50 chart of most-visited websites

There seems to be growing interest in Pinterest, with the site appearing for the first time in a top 50 chart for most-visited websites.

Research firm comScore on Wednesday released web activity data for the month of September, with fast-growing social networking start-up Pinterest edging into its top 50 chart of most visited US websites for the very first time.

Coming in at number 50 with over 25 million visitors during last month, the site still has some way to go to catch the likes of Facebook (placed 4th with 150 million visitors), LinkedIn (26th with 39 million visitors) and Twitter (27th with 36 million visitors), but it’s certainly a start.

Pinterest’s entry into the top 50 chart comes a short time after some significant changes at the firm. In August, it ended its invitation-only model, enabling anyone to join. In the same month the site, which allows users to easily share items of interest discovered on the Web by ‘pinning’ images to a board, launched free apps for Android devices and Apple’s iPad.

Google topped comScore’s list, though its 186 million visitors were across all of its sites. The same goes for Microsoft, in second place with 166 million visitors and Yahoo, in third spot with 163 million visitors.

Among news-based sites, the New York Times ranked highest at number 15 with 71 million visitors.

The research firm noted that back-to-schoolers wasted little time in getting down to business, pointing out a significant increase in Web traffic to education-oriented sites.

“Students and teachers were back in the classroom in September, resulting in a surge in traffic to education sites that earned it the number 1 spot on the top-gaining categories chart,” Jeff Hackett, comScore’s executive vice president, said.

With the economy still in a precarious state and many Americans on the lookout for attractive money-saving deals, incentive sites also saw a pick-up in traffic in September, with the category growing by 7 percent to 24.6 million visitors. Zulily topped the category with 3 million visitors, followed by SlickDeals with 2.5 million.

You can check out the full details of comScore’s report here (pdf).

[via Cnet]

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

With hidden features exposed, Pinterest quickly rolls out user blocking and other updates

Earlier Pinleague discovered Pinterest's hidden blocking feature, and the social network responded by making blocking and reporting users publicly available.

The third most requested feature on Pinterest is the ability to block users from following or seeing pins. The feature, according to Pinterest, has been in the works for awhile. By chance, Pinterest marketing company Pinleague discovered today that the ability to block users was hidden from sight but there nonetheless. We can assume that the Pinterest team was testing out the new feature behind the scenes prior to its release, but now it’s announced and publicly available for users.

Before the announcement however, you could access the feature by simply editing Pinterest’s source code using your browser, which would surface the blocking feature. After hearing about the loophole, we headed straight to our own Pinterest page, but by that time the team was wise to our ways and had already released the blocking tool.  

Pinterest maintains a section on its site where users can offer new feature suggestions. The popularity of features is gauged by user votes, and developers take the feedback into consideration before deciding on what should or shouldn’t be implemented. The block user suggestion was ranking quite high, but is now nowhere to be found.

A blog post by Dannie Chu, Pinterest software engineer, explains the block feature’s integration, among other updates.

“Blocking prevents both of you from being able to follow each other’s boards as well as like, repin, and comment on each other’s pins. When you block someone, the other person is not automatically notified. However, a blocked person will know they’ve been blocked if he or she tries to follow you or interact with your pins.”

To block a user, you just need to hover over the flag icon on the bottom right corner of a user’s profile. At the very bottom of the box that pops up, you’ll see a bright red button for “Block [username].” According to Pinterest, you might not yet see the flag icon on its desktop app but it’s going to be rolling out shortly to all users. As for its mobile app, the block and report a user will appear in the next mobile update.

In addition to blocking, the team has launched a feature that will now enable you to report users, and not only individual pins. The report feature comes with a selection of types of reports you can file from “nudity or pornography” to “spam.” The “report user” feature was the eighth most popular feature requested by users and in fact hasn’t been taken down from the request page as of press time. It’s surely a tool that will help Pinterest and graphic artists fight copyright issues that plague that site; if a user is a repeat offender, now their account status and not just guilty pins will be punished. 

The last new update enables users to have greater control over settings to let you further filter the types of emails that you receive from Pinterest.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Despite Pinterest fatigue, it’s proving itself a powerful social shopping destination

Pinterest no longer has its early luster, but a report by eMarketer shows the platform is a social shopping destination with high conversion rates that translate into sales.

Since launching in March 2010, Pinterest has ridden the virtual collector hype and risen to the top of the Web faster than any platform before it. By July 2012, comScore estimated the total users in the United States totaled 23.4 million. It’s a far cry from the hundreds of millions of users that Twitter and Facebook have amassed to date, but according to eMarkerter, Pinterest has the purchasing power that competing social networks would kill for.

Women tend to make up the majority of users on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter, and it turns out this demographic has quite a big or buying power. The latest figure from June estimates that as many as 79 percent of Pinterest users are female. For the record, competitor social networks Twitter and Facebook also slightly skew in favor of a more female-friendly user base. 62 percent of Twitter users are women and 58 percent of Facebook users are women.

And according to eMarketer’s report, based on a study by SteelHouse, as many as 59 percent of female Pinterest users in May 2012 (based on 303 respondents) had clicked through Pinterest to an external site and made a purchase. This figure is higher than media company BlogHer’s results, which showed that 47 percent of female users that had made a purchase on Pinterest after using the site. But it’s apparent that Pinterest holds considerable influence over its user’s purchasing habits.

In particular its users are more likely to follow retailers than on Twitter and Facebook, which indicates higher brand loyalty. There’s also a higher chance that a user will make purchases on Pinterest than on other social networks.

The BlogHer study also found that blogs held the top spot for “sites whose recommendations have helped influence U.S. female social network users to make a purchase” in February 2012 with 61 percent. Pinterest followed in second with 47 percent, while Facebook and Twitter round out the list with 33 percent and 31 percent of female users, respectively.

If you want to get more specific about Pinterest’s purchasing power, research firm Vision Critical and Emily Carr University found in March 2012 that in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S., one in five users purchased items that they pinned themselves. 12 percent made the purchases online while 16 percent purchased a pinned item offline.

Bizrates Insights went deeper to discover the product categories that were most purchased by Pinterest users in the same month. 39 percent of users purchased clothing and apparel, 23 percent purchased jewelry, handbags & accessories, while art, art supplies & hobbies accounted for 22 percent of the purchases.

Despite the rapid ascent to become the third largest social networking site, the hype has waned and Pinterest’s growth is stabilizing. There was one month between April and May, where the number of unique visitors dropped, and eMarketer points to a survey conducted by SheSpeaks and Women’s Marketing Inc. which indicated that more than half of the female respondents were not using the site daily (or at all) and only 30 percent of those surveyed used Pinterest for longer than one hour per day. While Pinterest may never grow to the size that Twitter, Facebook, or even Google+, user numbers aren’t everything — especially when you aren’t in the display ads business. What does matter for Pinterest is click-through purchasing rates, and all signs indicate the platform is facilitating the connection between shoppers and retailers.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Following a logo update, eBay unveils a Pinspired redesign

The new eBay redesign is here, and it looks a lot like Pinterest -- if Pinterest's goal was to help you spend tons of cash.

Earlier in September, eBay announced that a “new eBay” was coming, teasing the audience with a logo rebranding to reveal a slimmer, more modern take on what used to be a clunky, bulbous design. Today, eBay takes the next step in unveiling a site overhaul that shows off a Pinterest-like grid interface to help shoppers browse more comfortably and more visually.

The “old” eBay allowed shoppers to view search results in a list or grid view, with price, auction end date, and Buy It Now options either lining the right side of the screen or hidden in grid view. The new design is tailored to be more mobile friendly, allowing for larger photos and fitting more listings in one page without having to scroll through search results. The redesign is even more helpful for shop owners, as they can have a prettier place to display all the items being auctioned off while their star ratings are located promptly at the top of their profiles to offer credibility. 

Furthermore, eBay users can view a feed of watched items, featured, recently viewed, or “My Feed,” which showcases a grid of things you’ve chosen to curate under your profile. This way, even if you aren’t selling the item yourself, you can promote your customers to a list of products they might like based off purchases they’ve made from your store before.

“The future of commerce is personal, driven by data. Search results and recommendations are no longer enough,” eBay President Devin Wenig writes in an announcement post. “Consumers want insight. And they want personal, curated selection that is relevant to them, controlled by them.”

EBay joins Facebook in revealing a Pinterest-ified e-commerce element this week. The social network recently unveiled its Collections feature, a brand-facing tool that gives retailers a visual, pinboard-formatted way to show off their goods. The mechanism also introduced “Collect” and “Want” actions to Facebook, giving users the ability to create wishlists and show off their purchases, as well as click-through buying power. And, of course, it all looks incredibly similar to the site that really ignited the social shopping craze — Pinterest. The hype about its profit-turning power has been enough to get e-commerce hopefuls mimicking its design. 

The more contemporary, clean eBay interface is slated for launch in the upcoming weeks stateside, while a global launch should be anticipated by the year’s end. It’s definitely eBay’s answer to being more intuitive, and making shoppers spend money faster in an Amazon-like fashion. If you’re already an avid eBayer, the redesign might make it that much more appealing for you to keep auctioning the things you want and want to sell, but it’s still going to be a tough to compete with the hoards of loyal Amazon users. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Is Pinterest the Best Place to Go for Online Shopping?

Pinterest is an interesting site to take a look at. This is a virtual pinboard site that lets you share some of the many things that you find online. It is not necessarily a place that is used for shopping but it could be an interesting place to see when it comes to getting ideas for what you can buy. These are appealing features that often make it easy for you to find great ideas for all kind of interesting shopping purpose.

Pinterest

The concept of Pinterest is easy to understand. You can find an image on a website and then add a pin to that image. This can be used to save the image to an account you have. This account can feature the images that you are interested in. This image will also link back to the website that the image was found on. You may also choose to upload images off of your hard drive or other data storage device. It can work with many image files. You can get this information used well to offer more things that you want to take a look at. This can be used to allow you to share data on what you like with other people. It is an easy to use feature that does not take too much effort for you to get handled.

Pinterest is not a place that you could go to in order to buy something directly off of the site. However, it is a good place for you to go to when it comes to finding interesting ideas. This makes it so you can find different items dedicated to a variety of fields that you might be interested in shopping for. The places that you can find data from can be attractive spots to find. There are a variety of different places on the site that are divided over in different categories. These include categories involving weddings, furniture, food and drink, crafts, cars and more.

Use Pinterest for Shopping

The images you can find can be particularly useful. They can come in many styles and can range from professional photos to some photos that have been taken by users who have certain things that they want to share with others. You can even repin these items to share them with other people who might be interested in what you have liked.

The data that you can find can be stored in a variety of different albums. These can be arranged by individual site users. They can combine a number of great things together. For example, you can find an album that showcases a variety of pictures involving different kitchen items that you can use in your home. You can also get access to different links relating to each individual picture you see, thus making it easier for you to find something of use.

You should see how Pinterest can help you out with finding things that you want to get online. Pinterest can give you plenty of inspiration with regards to what you should be buying when you are shopping for different items online. It makes for an attractive thing to see.

Guest post by Tina H. who is a writer for Ukritic.com. If you love Pinterest, but you want to make real money to spend online, take a look at the Ukritic homepage, where you can find out how to make money online. 

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

App of the Week: Pinterest for iOS and Android

Image credit: Pinterest

App Name:  Pinterest

Price: Free

Available Platforms: iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android

What does it do?  This image-based sharing app allows users to select, or “pin,” visual items and place them into virtual bulletin boards, a perfect way to categorize your favorite things,  such as artists you like, or all those muscle cars you dream of owning one day,  and then share them with friends. The iPad, iPhone, and Android apps launched a week ago and  gives you the flexibility to pin from anywhere you are whenever you wish.

The layout is simple, displaying tiled images that cascade in columns down the screen. You can swipe from left to right as you browse, and a menu button on the top left-hand corner provides you with categories of pins from which to choose, such as architecture, food and drink, and animals. When you tap on an image, you can like it, “repin” it to one of your own boards, or share it with others using your Facebook, Twitter or email account. You an also surf the web within the app and use the “Pin” button to post original items.

The iPhone app provides a two-column layout allowing you to see more as you navigate, and the iPad app allows you to resume browsing the site after viewing a board. The much anticipated Android app is optimized for all sizes and speeds of Android’s phones and tablets and is available at the Google Play Store and the Amazon App Store for the Kindle Fire.

Is it easy to set up? Yes. As simple as simple gets. Log in with your email, Facebook or Twitter account. Signing up for the service is easiest via the website though.

Should I try it? The easy-to-use layout and flexibility of this app lets you keep collecting and sharing images of things you like, make you laugh or make you think while sitting at home, or out and about on the town. So, yes, you should try it.

Let us know if you have any app of the week suggestions on Twitter at@TechThisOutABC.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

DT Daily: Pinterest for Android, lost pyramids, driverless cars attacked

Tweet

August 15, 2012

• DT Daily Syndication

Pinterest finally gets an Android app, Microsoft's tablet could sell for cheap, Google Earth may have uncovered lost pyramids in Egypt, Bill Gates seeks to reinvent the toilet, and driverless cars come under attack.

Related Links:

• At last – Pinterest launches Android, iPad apps
• Microsoft’s Surface tablet to sell for just $199, report claims
• Lost Egyptian Pyramids found?
• Bill Gates on quest to reinvent the toilet
• Political ad uses fear of “driverless cars” to scare elderly voters

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Pinterest ends invites, now open to all

Pinterest has created quite a stir since launching back in 2010. Up until today you needed an invitation from a friend or the site itself to join. From today, however, it's open to all.

If you’ve been hanging around waiting for an invite to the Pinterest party then wait no more, for the up-and-coming social networking site has now opened its doors to all.

The fast-growing site announced open registration in a blog post on Wednesday. Up to now, those wanting to join had to request an invite from the site or hope to be given one by a friend who was already a member.

“We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know. Happy pinning to everyone!” the post read.

Launched in March 2010, the site – which allows users to easily share anything of interest found on the Web by ‘pinning’ images to a board – soon created a stir, and within 18 months had been listed by Time magazine as one of the best 50 websites of 2011.

Earlier this year, Silicon Valley-based Pinterest became the third most popular social networking site in the US behind Facebook and Twitter – not bad going for a site that at the time was still accepting new members through invitation only. In May, the company received backing to the tune of $100 million from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, valuing the company at $1.5 billion

Now that Tom, Dick and Harry can join, the site’s creators can expect to see a surge in sign-ups as new members come to see what all the fuss is about. Whether interest in Pinterest will continue to grow, flatline or take a dive in the long-term is anyone’s guess, but judging by the way things have been going up to now, those working for the company must be pretty excited about what the future might hold.

If you fancy taking a closer look at Pinterest, head over here to sign up.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com