If 2012 is going to go down the history books as the Facebook year then it would also be remembered as the year of Pinterest. Although Pinterest has been around since 2010, it only came into limelight from last year. One of the few reasons being the launch of its iPhone app, Facebook integrating it into it’s open graph, etc. Today Pinterest is the third most visited website in US but then outside of US, it is yet to achieve the same success.

Pinterest, which has been branded as a network for women, had attracted me initially but with time I have lost interest. Not because it was labeled as a women’s site but because of some of it’s shortcomings in usability. I logged in some days ago just to witness the same problems that existed before. Here’s a list of them:

1. Home page: The biggest problem I have is when I land up on my home page. Yes it is appealing for the first few times but later on, it has appeared as a visual junk yard to me. Not that I follow too many people but since people today share more than they consume so an alternative way to display could be thought of. I think a similar situation persisted in Twitter and that’s the reason why we have lists to control them and be able to consume them. Can Pinterest allow me to have lists in the profile page, which can be tailored to my needs?

2. Search: I spend maximum time on social media and when I join any network I look for the “Search” feature to explore more. Once you have joined all your friends, you would love to find more people or boards to explore more. In the case of Pinterest, the search becomes more important since it is a site about pictures and we love to see more and more of them. Definitely Pinterest has a search but then it can make it better, which would allow pinners to connect to others easily. Certainly, some advanced features are required to the basic search Pinterest is providing as of now.

3. Interest based content: From consuming everything, we are moving onto curated information and I think it can be done in Pinterest. Other than following the same set of friends from Facebook and Twittter, can Pinterest show me content from people that is of my interest. For example, since I love glass painting I would love to follow people who have the same interest and share the same kind of content. Pinterest has categories but they are very broad and again neither can they be sorted nor displayed in a way that I would want.  Along with this, Pinterest can add a feature saying “People To Follow” based on interests like it has “Friends To Follow” which would definitely increase the levels of engagement in the site.

4. Popular: The Popular tab is useful to explore more but lacks features like customizations and showing me what is popular in my network. Can the tab have categories so that it can list all popular pins or boards under one category, wouldn’t that be helpful? Besides this, it would be great if Pinterest can populate a small feed which will show me what is popular in my network too. Popular is a great feature but right now it has not been designed to be used to it’s full extent.

5. Social Sharing: Initially, I had a thought that open graph by Facebook has extensively helped developers. It has, no doubt but at the expense of user experience. Social sharing apps are becoming a spam with every passing day. Pinterest has an option to disable social sharing to your networks but why is it that every time it has to populate all my activities and show people on other networks. Wouldn’t it be great if I have the control on what to show and what not to? Time for Pinterest to think on this direction too.

6. Analytics: Finally we all love numbers don’t we? Can Pinterest have an added feature, which could give some more insights other than the number of likes and comments. We have third-party apps likePinerly who do the job but it would be great to have it from Pinterest rather than logging into another site to get the services.

7. Brand Integration: Recently, Simply Zesty had published some interesting case studies on how brands are using Pinterest. All good but how does one know which are the brands that are using it? For example, the other day I was looking for Indian brands that  are using Pinterest. The only way possible was via search and the results were not helpful. Wonder if Pinterest plans to integrate brands and show them in different categories. So that users can quickly search about them and follow them.

Pinterest. The current social media darling and possibly the most controversial social platform yet?

Pinterest is a site where you can create visual, virtual pinboards to track and plan an event or project. Over 70% of the sites’ users are women and some of the most pinned images are of food. Users say it’s incredibly addictive.

Should your business be on Pinterest? Of course it should. Should you be concerned about copyright? Well that depends.

If your site is filled with commercially sensitive visuals then you will already be taking steps to protect your copyright and your images. If you haven’t already installed the “no-pin” script to prevent pinning, now would be the time to do this.

If you find that images have been pinned from your site without your permission then you can report the copyright violation and Pinterest will act upon your request.
But what if you don’t have commercially sensitive images?

As an online marketer, I can’t see any reason why you would want to prevent your images from beingpinned unless you would like to lose your competitive advantage.

Reading a Pinterest /Copyright post from former direct marketer, Elaine Sturgess, I have to agree with her points –

the idea that there is much of an issue [Copyright] at all rather bemuses me. After all, what Pinterest does is offer a completely free method of providing promotion and exposure; it means people can express their interest in your product, service or art, including wonderful photography – and then share that interest with others – and if it means you can get an idea about which product, services and ideas customers are interested in, where’s the issue?

It’s also a fact that the photos that appear on Pinterest are low resolution and small – in other words, their practical use for any other application other than providing you with that free marketing exposure is extremely limited – you can’t use them for print or any other application requiring a high resolution quality photograph – and if you take the time to watermark them, they can hardly be used for anything else online either.

As Elaine correctly points out, the images and resolution are too small for offline use and when watermarked they are barely useable in the online world. Still protective of your images? Or are you starting to see things in a new light? Well that’s not the only reason you should be on Pinterest, you need to be part of their community too. Although mainstream marketers have only just discovered Pinterest, it’s been established since 2010. You need to comment and interact with people there, just like you would any other community.

But you do have to be careful when it comes to copyright and that’s when it comes to pinning and re-pinning images from Google.

Why you should never Pin directly from Google Images…

Pins from can be embedded in blog posts and when that happens the Pins are attributed correctly from the source site. This can be another problem area for corporate content creators. If a person pins an image from Google, then Google is attributed as the source of that image on Pinterest.

If you are searching for pinnable images to create a vision board or relevant services related board, you should never pin from Google images.

You must go to the original source of the image. If you are using Google Images to find your photos, click to view the original page and click the “X” at the top right corner of the image. That will bring you to the original web page and you can pin from there. This ensures correct attribution for the image.

If you see a pin that you must repin, then track it back to its original source. A few minutes work here will see that you are on the right side of attribution when it comes to copyright. If you click the Pin, it will take you to the page the image was pinned from. If that’s Google then click the X at the top of the image and visit the image in its natural habitat. Scroll down and see if there is a link to the photographer / designer image, if there is then you need to click that link and pin from there as that is the original source of the image.

Seems like a lot of work? Possibly, but it’s the safest way to pin and repin images using Pinterest.