Five years after its launch, Pinterest has created an option to buy the pins that you pin.
For many, Pinterest is the place where people go to find dresses, DIY ideas and decoration-based projects. By pinning an item to your board, you are able to come back to it and view it on its original website. The social aspect comes in the form of sharing content and describing interests, which is the whole focus on Pinterest.
On June 30, Pinterest announced that the buyable pins were now rolling out. With an article on its blog, Pinterest set some of the ground rules along with a video accompanying three different situations. Pinners can now find the right jacket for the right price or locate a dining-room table that accents a room. Buying from Pinterest will just mean that you will be charged directly from the retailer itself, not Pinterest. By simply storing credit-card numbers on Stripe, the information will be kept away from retailers as well as from Pinterest. This way, you won’t have to re-enter the credit-card information as stated in Pinterest’s new privacy policy:
When you buy something on Pinterest, you’ll need to share some payment and contact info with us so that we can complete your order. We’ll save this info so you don’t have to type it in next time you make a purchase. We’ll also share this info with the seller, and they’ll treat it as if you bought from their website directly
Currently the service is free, but the extent of it is unknown.
Will this form of social media become a focus for e-commerce? The whole concept of Pinterest is that it focuses on the idea of inspiration. If one can buy that inspirational item, is it as valuable? Many repin images of fashion and find ways to creatively construct that outfit. Some people will love the idea of simply buying it, but others may see the social media turning into an Amazon of some sort, focusing on buying rather than inspiration.
Once people have bought something, the default setting will be that Pinterest will “make Promoted Pins even more relevant and useful to Pinners like you. For example, if you purchased a camping tent on Pinterest, we may show you Promoted Pins for other outdoorsy products. More emphasis on commerce, once again.”
Over the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see the direction this will go. What do you think?