Email From Pinterest:

I had two thoughts driving home from the hospital with my wife, Divya. The first was, “I can’t believe I’m a Dad.” The second was, “I hope I can get our new baby, Max, out of that new car seat when we get home.”

During the first couple weeks, we started to figure out all the little things that are second nature for experienced parents: changing diapers, swaddling a wriggly infant, and doing every household task with one arm. As usual, Divya was a few steps ahead of me. When our doctor suggested we buy a humidifier she said, “Oh, I already have one!” When I was getting Max ready for his first bath, she pulled out a neat homemade bath kit, complete with a tiny towel, comb and toothbrush. I felt like I’d forgotten to read a secret New Baby Instruction Manual. In an exasperated moment, I remember asking Divya, “How did you figure all this stuff out already?!” She looked at me and and cheerfully replied, “I just follow other parents on Pinterest!”

Over the last year, there have been so many ways, big and small, that the Pinterest community has made my life better. I’m happy to say that I’m not alone. We’ve heard from teachers who use Pinterest to plan lessons, chefs who share recipes, and museums that pin their archives. We’ve also heard from millions of people who’ve been inspired to pick up an old hobby or try something new. It’s honestly more than we ever expected when we started Pinterest. We’re humbled to be part of such a positive, warm and creative community.

Today, we’re excited to continue this tradition with a new feature we hope will make Pinterest even better—secret boards. Secret boards give you a place for things you’re not quite ready to share yet, like a surprise party, special gift ideas, or even planning for a new baby. We’re testing out the feature by giving everyone 3 secret boards. You’ll find them at the bottom of your profile. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

On behalf of our team here at Pinterest, thanks so much for pinning, inviting your friends, and sending us ideas for how we can improve. Most of all, thanks for sharing your inspirations. With your help, we’ll make Pinterest a little better every day.

—Ben & the Pinterest Team

Helpful New Feature?

What do you think of the new functionality? Will you be using it?

Check Your Settings

Since this is a new addition, don’t expect to navigate through Flickr and see loads of images you can easily Pin. The decision is up to the content owner, so any new images uploaded can be included. Any older images would have to be edited if it does not already have “ShareALike” Creative Commons.”

Share On Pinterest

Once a user sets their photos to the correct attribution, sharing is simple. Above the photo there a “share” drop down. Click on it and the Pinterest button will populate alongside Facebook, Twitter and Email.

Select Category / Description

You can then post directly to Pinterest using the familiar Pinmarket

Check It Out On Pinterest

You can now see your pin with wonderful attribution on your Pinterest page.

That’s it! Pretty easy and nifty.

What Do You Think?

What do you think about this integration? Is this something you’d use? Tweet me @tammykfennell and be sure to check out MarketMeSuite’s Pinterest Innovation, MarketMeSuite’s PinMe.

You may be new to Pinterest and the growing craze around it, but, there’s a pretty good chance your site has preceded you on the network.

In one quick step you can find out if any content from your domain has been pinned, and interact with the pinners.

But here’s where it gets pretty cool.  PinMeSearch, the Twitter handle for the new tool, tweeted this over the weekend:

Wow, over 65% of people who have tried marketmesuite.com/pinme by @MarketMeSuite have found their site has already been pinned!

— MarketMeSuite PinMe (@PinMeSearch) April 21, 2012

Over 65% — think about that. Four out of every six sites who type their domain wind up finding out they are already on Pinterest.

Pundits getting it wrong?

There’s been a fair bit of news coverage lately about the Pinterest “bubble” bursting. Here is an excerpt from the Daily Mail on Saturday:

“In recent months celebrities and politicians have rushed to join the thousands of media savvy ‘pinning’ on the web’s latest hit social network. But they may have caught on too late as it now seems that the Pinterest bubble has already burst. After a meteoric rise in popularity in January and February new figures show that the photo-sharing site is unexpectedly losing users this month.”

Bubble Not “Burst”

If you look at the data for any of the “bubble” stories, they all seem to originate from one source. AppData, which monitors how often users of third-party apps and other web sites interact with Facebook, has shown the site’s decline.

Pinterest can work  a ‘timeline app’ within Facebook, allowing Facebook users to use one log-in across both and share ‘pins’ – Pinterest’s term for posts – via a Facebook page. The site’s growth slowed last month as a timeline app; active users are down from 11.15 million on April 1 to 8.3 million today.

However, this could mean exactly the opposite. It could mean that Pinterest is growing in its own right, and avid “pinners” want to keep it away from their other networks. Those who “Pin” a pretty picture they’ve found while surfing the net may not want to broadcast this across Facebook or Twitter. Pinners are amassing large followings of their own within Pinterest itself.

Business Use Is Growing

One thing is for sure: If over 65% of businesses who go to see if their site has preceded them on Pinterest are already there, there is a heck of a lot of pinning going on. It would be wise for businesses to at least have a look. After all, if someone is already championing your brand, wouldn’t you like to know?

Tammy Kahn Fennel (CEO of MarketMeSuite) was giving an impressive master-class on how to generate leads on Twitter, then turned her attention to Pinning. She started by talking us through her own research, which started with the question: “How can Pinterest help small businesses?” and ended with her creating a pin board for her father’s collectable Hummel figurine business (a niche, if ever there was one!) and attracting 18 followers and 5 re-pins in just 72 hours.

Now, that may not sound amazing, but ask yourself: how else could you find 18 people who are into Hummel figurines in 3 days without a budget?

Being an entrepreneurial crew, Tammy and her team also realised that there’s currently no way for businesses to easily discover if their products and services have been ‘pinned’ on Pinterest by people they have no connection with. To meet this need, they’ve just launched PinMe, a free service that lets you do just that.

To demonstrate how this works,  Tammy did a live search for one of the attendees in Manchester, a company with the URL www.frenchsoaps.co.uk. The business owner confirmed that she’s never used Pinterest and had no idea if her products were featured on any pin boards.  As she looked on, PinMe revealed that a keen Pinterest user has indeed posted one of her products up – to a pin board titled, wait for it…”Products I love“.

Now, how’s that for a public endorsement? In fact, it’s more than that: it’s a self-selected customer lead. A few people in our audience genuinely gasped. One guy even dropped his iPhone 4S.

Of course, neither of these experiments demonstrates ROI, but both indicate that Pinterest should be a good opportunity for small businesses, especially those with attractive-looking products, to make new connections for little effort and no budget. We’ll feature more case studies as they arise, but in the meantime, why not run a Pinterest experiment of your own?

I’ve been hearing all the hype and the buzz, but I had one question in my mind:

How can this be used for small businesses?

Not many people know, but in a previous life, way before running the popular Social Media Marketing Dashboard, MarketMeSuite, I ran a small family e-commerce businesses. We sold all sorts of collectibles from instruments to old books, but where we really focused our attention was figurines, namely Hummel Figurines.

My father still runs this fun business out of New York (you can view his store here) so I asked him if he was up for a little experimenting. The conversation went something like this:

“Dad, there’s this new network out there.”

“Another network?!? We’re just starting to understand Facebook…”

“I know, but this one seems really interesting. I’d like to see if it could drive you more potential leads.”

“Sure, go for it, show me the money.”

Ready, Set, Pin!

I quickly put together a small pin board:

I have allowed my father and one of his employees to contribute to it:

I’ve only pinned about 5 things so far. A few images from his eBay store and Hummel site, and some vintage Youtube videos I did for him many years ago.  I did a quick search to see if anyone else posted any Hummel pictures. I found a lady and quickly commented saying it’s nice to see another Hummel fan on here and linked her to my board.

The Results?

In just 72 hours we now have 18 followers of this pinboard, and 5 repins. This may not sound a lot to a big company, but in a small niche business, where you’re only as good as your next collection, amassing a targeted following so quickly is pretty much unheard of.  I know it can be done on Twitter, I’ve done it myself on Twitter many times, but for some industries, Twitter just isn’t where the customers are. In the case of Hummel Figurines, it seems we have tapped into just the right vein.

Lack Of Competition

It’s also worth noting the Hummel Figurine board I made is currently the only board of its type on the entire network. I’m not sure how long this will stay, but that in itself is an opportunity.

Has Your Site Been Pinned?

You may be surprised. My dad’s site “vintagerarestuff.com” had already debuted on the network when someone pinned a photo from the site. We’re working on something at MarketMeSuite to show you how many times your site has been pinned. The results may surprise you! Keep an eye on MarketMeSuite.com/pinme for more details.

Have You Pinned?

I will continue to watch my experiment and see how the followers translate into traffic, but the early results are very promising.  Have you pinned for your business? I’m really curious to hear stories of how SMBs are using Pinterest to capture leads.

Although the API for rapidly growing social network “Pinterest” is done and ready for developers, it has not been released to the public yet.

Why Stay Closed?

According to Business Insider, Pinterest fears having a “Twitter problem.” An API, or application programming interface, allows developers to build apps using Pinterest data.

But Does Twitter Really Have A Problem?

Sure, Twitter released their API when they were still an immature company, and this allowed 3rd party developers to fill in the gaps Twitter missed. And yes, when Twitter circled back and realized they wanted to “own” some of those concepts, they did piss off a lot of developers, but did it really hurt Twitter? I would argue it hurt the developers but not really the platform.

Without the push from third party devs to accelerate the growth of the platform I think it’s reasonable to say Twitter would not have taken off the way it did. And even now, when the dust has settled and the Twitter ecosystem is back on course, there is still a symbiotic relationship with 3rd party devs and Twitter, both helping each other to grow.

Did Twitter Do It Right?

Probably not. It was a roller coaster ride with Twitter in the early days, and a lot of good devs jumped ship. But, without some of the really innovative apps to push Twitter into the mainstream, I’m just not sure there’d be much of a network to talk about. Apps like HootSuite, MarketMeSuite, and the recently sunsetted CoTweet have found ways to pull in a business audience, from Small to Enterprise, while Twitter itself can focus more on the consumer market.

What Can Pinterest Learn?

Pinterest may be wise to think a bit more carefully about how they wish to grow, but I would caution them against being too closed off. The social web is dependent on outside developers to keep things moving and keep things relevant. If not, there will be another “Pinterest” style app that springs up with a commitment to openness and Pinterest may find themselves in the company of other social media platforms gone wrong, like MySpace and the very ancient “Friendster.”

Thoughts?

Do you think Pinterest is being smart or too careful? Connect with me on twitter @tammykfennell or comment below. I’ve only just started pinning, so I’d love to connect with readers there and follow some interesting boards! pinterest.com/tammykfennell/

While many of us are locked into the Pinterest obsession, many others have still not recognized its relevance or are simply uninterested in what it has to offer.  If you are one of the latter personalities, one of these three alternatives may be for you!

Fancy

If you like the general idea of Pinterest, but cannot give into waiting for an invite, Fancy is for you!  Fancy has the same concept as Pinterest, in that, it is pictures only.  You can Fancy pictures (similar to liking a picture) and Add to Lists (which is similar to Pinterest Boards).  There are minor differences between the two social media sites.  Fancy gives you a Rank, which is basically a way for other people to rank your popularity.  The more people Rank you, the more popular you become.  Fancy also gives out badges, although I have not received any yet, and could not find a source to tell what type of badges you can earn.  Another feature of Fancy is Deals.  You can look at the Deals tab to find tons of deals on the internet.  I am sure this list will grow as the site gains popularity.

Gentlemint

The man’s Pinterest!  It is no secret that 90% of Pinterest’s users are women.  Gentlemint is full of manly things posted by manly men, but surprisingly, it is not just full of half naked girls.  It has tons of posts about things guys are truly interested in, which is refreshing to see.  Gentlemint is still invite only, but only because the creators of the site want the users to have an enjoyable experience without getting bogged down with too many users right off the bat.

“Put simply, we have a great, small community of users and continually doubling or tripling the size of the community overnight (which is essentially what we’d have to do to keep up with demand) would ruin the experience for our current users and make things very challenging for us to keep up with. “  Read More

Gentlemint is always adding new features, the latest being Save to Your Mint, which is slightly similar to putting things on boards.

Chill

Similar to Pinterest, but with videos instead of pictures!  While is may sound like YouTube, it is not just a place to watch random videos across the internet.  On Chill, you get to share videos you like and watch videos others have posted.  You can comment on others videos, show you have watched it, and use emotions to show how you feel about the videos.  You can also repost the videos and share new videos in Collections (which are like Pinterest Boards).  Chill also lets you customize your page unlike any of the other sites listed.

Key Take Away

So, while some sites get all the attention, there are still other social sites out there that can spike anyone’s Fancy!  Try these out and see which one is best suited for you and your particular interests!

Follow me on Fancy and Chill.  Sorry I do not have a Gentlemint account, I leave that to the fellas!

You Can’t Pin This

Pinterest have had to take action this week to ensure that the content shared on their site is within copyright rules. Whereas before, any website could have their work shared to Pinterest by a user, they now have the option to “Opt Out” of that action. If a website wishes to not have its content shared, it simply has to add some web code to its site which blocks visitors from sharing. If they now try to “Pin” via a blocked site, they receive the following message:

This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!” ~ Courtesy of BBC News Online

Key Take Away

As one of the worlds fastest growing social networks and taking off with such velocity, Pinterest really must be seen to be playing by the rules and even laws in this case. It’s no good being the new craze then getting shut down at a snap of a finger for breaking  copyright  rules. It does strike me as a little odd that it’s something that was not considered earlier but at least they are now taking the  appropriate  steps to secure the rights of websites, their own business and their users. With these new steps in place, you can know you are safely Pinning content you are allowed to share without fear!

~ Articles:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17111041

~ Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobthelomond