Pinterest users who were around in its early days will recognize the “new” features that have been added (aka, brought back) in the latest update, including the “See it now” feature that takes a user directly to their pin after pinning it. Another feature the company said users wanted back was “Pinned from”, which showed who a pin was from, making it particularly easy to find others with like-minded tastes. The feature has been brought back.

Simple mentions have been re-introduced in this new update, allowing users to mention friends in a pin description via an “@” tag, which pulls up a list of individuals from which the user can select. Speaking of friends, users can now also see who among their Twitter followers and Facebook friends are using the social network, making it easier to connect and share.

Lest the entire update center around old features, the update also features some improvements, including more notifications thanks to a Recent Activity upgrade. The feature has been moved to the top right corner, and shows notifications for repins, likes, comments, follows, and mentions, as well as access to older notifications. There’s also an improved search that suggests keywords while a query is typed.

[via Pinterest]

Furthermore, the app will come pre-loaded for new NOOK devices starting today. However, it seems that the app will only work on the NOOK HD, NOOK HD+, NOOK Tablet, and the NOOK Color. For those who already have a NOOK device, you can download the Pinterest app right now, allowing you to resume pinning from on-the-go in no time.

Pinterest joins Facebook and Twitter as one of the handful of apps pre-loaded on NOOK devices. Claudia Romanini, who is the vice president of NOOK apps at Barnes & Noble, says that Pinterest has “long been one of” the company’s most requested apps, so we’re positive that most NOOK users will benefit greatly from the addition of Pinterest.

Barnes & Noble has been trying to get the NOOK series back on track recently, and the company is working slowly to accomplish that. They recently launched the NOOK Press self-publishing platform, as well as the ability for in-app purchases in order to reel in more bacon. The addition of Pinterest might not make great strides with the company, but it could put them in right direction.

One of the changes include increasing the size of pins. This will help users see “more of what you love”. Pinterest has also made it so that when you’re browsing through pins, and find yourself buried deep into your search, you can hit the “back” button on your browser and it will land you all the way back to where you were before you started browsing. Sometimes you get lost in what your doing, and Pinterest understands.

Another major change is the amount of information you see when you click on a pin. Not only will you see a larger, more close-up shot of a pin, you will also see pins on the same board as the original image, as well as more pins from the website the original pin came from. You will also be able to see what other pins the user has pinned on their boards, a feature that will make its way to mobile devices soon. This will allow you to spend more times discovering the things you like.

Overall, the user experience for Pinterest will see a great, new change after this. The site has also stated that they have “rebuilt their foundation”, so Pinterest should be much more stable and reliable. Pinterest encourages users who have any feedback to leave a message on their blog post. You should be updated to the new design shortly, and once you do, you can resume craving that ridiculously delicious-looking cupcake while that motivational workout pin makes you feel guilty.

[via Pinterest]

Open Graph actions range from a variety of things, including follows, likes, songs listened to (on a variety of services like Spotify or Pandora), articles read on various news portals, videos watched on YouTube, LiveLeak, etc, images pinned on Pinterest, photos liked or shared on Instagram, and more. Users enabled many of these services to automatically share their information through their Facebook Newsfeed.

So far, Facebook users have shared a total of 110 million songs, albums, and radio stations over 40 billion times, and have shared around 1.47 million books. Facebook makes it easy for users to share their data to their timeline through integrated apps, or social buttons placed throughout a majority of websites and blogs out there. It hopes to make sharing on its network more personable and enjoyable with acquisitions like Storylane.

These kind of numbers should have developers and companies promoting their next projects or campaigns through the social media behemoth. The user engagement looks promising for those that develop on the platform, or those who are looking to get more exposure to the world. Marketers should also be pleased that Facebook is offering new features that will make finding the right, targeted audience easier.

[via The Next Web]

The funds Pinterest raised came in a funding round led by Valiant Capital Management. Reports also indicate that existing investors in the company also participated in the funding including Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital. Pinterest has officially confirmed the funding with company CEO Ben Silbermann stating that the investment would give the company resources to help it realize its vision.

Pinterest is expected to use its new found $200 million to develop the product further and to accelerate international expansion. Expanding internationally would give the website more reach and greater impact. Pinterest has been growing rapidly and recent Pew Research metrics showed that the website was larger than many people think compared to other social networks.

Pinterest currently has about 50 million monthly unique visitors around the world and employs 100 people. Most people will be familiar with Pinterest, the site allows people to pin photos of their favorite things that can be shared with other users. Businesses like the website because content and tends to have a longer lifespan than content shared via social networks like Facebook.

[via AllThingsD]

Simply Measured’s CEO, Adam Schoenfield, says that with 90 million users actively using Instagram, Instagram is “proving to be a powerful channel for top brands to engage consumers through photo-sharing”. Top Brands have added 1.6 million followers to their accounts in the past 3 months alone, increasing its number of followers by 41%, and increasing brand engagement by up to 35%.

Adidas and Ralph Lauren has now joined the ranks of brands who have over 100,000 followers. Alongside them, there is also MTV, Starbucks, and Nike. Their brand engagement grew over 19%. Gucci and Tiffany & Co’s number of followers grew 65% to 75% in the last quarter, and their brand’s engagement has nearly doubled. 26% of brands now have over 10,000 followers, which is a 20% increase quarter over quarter.

41% of brands now post at least one photo per week to increase its followers’ engagement. That’s 34% more brands compared to last quarter. 98% of the photos that brands post on Instagram are now also linked to their Facebook pages. This results in at least 274 engagements per photo posted, or a 30% increase quarter-over-quarter. However, despite all of these brands adopting Instagram, brands still only stick to one filter, and that’s the ‘Lo-Fi’ filter. If you want to analyze any Instagram profile to see the statistics yourself, you can use the Simply Measured Instagram tool.

[via Business Wire]

This new look and feel was designed by eBay to help “personalize” its users’ shopping experience. By allowing shoppers to create a list composed of the items they love, eBay believes it can offer a more personalized and helpful shopping experience. The new homepage does look a lot more attractive than the current eBay layout, which currently shows your recent searches, eBay’s deals, and “popular on eBay” listings.

This new change will definitely help eBay in terms of revenue and profit, and it should make the eBay shopping experience more pleasant and fast-paced. The new homepage was tested with 10% of shoppers back in October, and it received a lot of positive feedback. eBay plans on launching a mobile app featuring the new look and feel sometime in the future.

That being said, you can actually begin customizing your eBay shopping feed right now. The feed creation wizard will guide you step-by-step through the process, starting with a list of items you have searched for in the past. You have to add 5 items to your list before you can view it. There is also an option to have updates from your list sent directly to your e-mail, which of course can result in you spending more money. Have fun shopping!

[via eBay]

The battle in the social networking market right now is for the second place spot. Pew shows that 16% of American Internet users are on twitter while 15% are on Pinterest. The two social networks being separated by one percentage point is a very close race and even closer when you consider Pew’s margin of error.

Pew says that its numbers can be off plus or minus 2.6%, meaning that Pinterest could easily be the second largest social network in the world right now. Pinterest is also growing having only 12% of United States Internet users on the network as of August 2012. The fourth place spot for the most popular social network went to Instagram boasting 13% of Internet users in the US on its service.

However, if we again consider the plus or minus 2.6% margin of error Pew admits to, Instagram could easily be the third most popular or even the second most popular social network in the United States. All we know for sure is that Facebook is dominating on a massive scale and it’s a three horse race for the second place spot.

[via Huffington Post]

This update centers around its group boards, with the improvements all dealing with that. Specifically, the update concerns contributors on boards, as well as the groups you’re following. With the update, users can now check out which other contributors are pinning to the same board as you, allowing you to spot those with similar interests, for example.

Likewise, users now have more control over boards in general. When you receive a new board invitation, you’ll have the option of either accepting it and ignoring it. If you get tired of one of the group boards you’re part of or want to leave it for some other reason, you can now do that from your Android smartphone or tablet after updating.

The app allows users to pin images from the device’s camera as well as images found online. Users can grab the update from the Google Play Store; it’s available for Android 2.2 and higher, and is 5.5MB in size. You can check out its other features, as well as screenshots of the app, at the Play Store here.

[via Android Community]

Regarding the changes to navigation, Pinterest is keeping its description short. The company only says that it’s made navigation more “intuitive” and faster to boot, showing off a half-image of the new interface. We can see a new drop-down menu split into plenty of different categories on the left of the page, so look forward to that once this new design lands later on down the road.

Pins are also getting something of an overhaul in this redesign, with Pinterest making them bigger in general. Users will also see more information related to the pin they’re viewing, as the new site will show related pins as well as additional ones from the same board. In other words, expect to lose track of time while browsing Pinterest more often than you already do.

There’s no word on when these new features will roll out for everyone, but for now, Pinterest is only going to be testing it with a small group of users. If you want to join this elite few, you can submit your information to Pinterest to be considered as a tester. The company seems to be keeping most things under wraps for the time being, so hopefully we hear a bit more about this redesign soon. Keep it here at SlashGear for more.

Schroeder and Cohen were partners in 2007 and 2008 for a project called Rendezvoo and, later on, Skoopwire. Allegedly, Cohen deliberately put the kibosh on Pinterest-like ideas that were going to be implemented into Rendezvoo. Then, later on after the two had separated, Cohen invested in Pinterest, which is said to have utilized several of Schroeder’s ideas.

The primary ideas that have allegedly been stolen and used by Pinterest are boards for content and infinite scrolling. It is also being said that Rendezvoo deliberately targeted women, and that Pinterest’s high percentage of female users is another indication of its illicit use of another’s ideas. Pinterest has responded, stating that the lawsuit is baseless and will be “aggressively fought.”

Schroeder’s lawyer sent this comment to AllThingsD: “The bottom line is that it’s illegal to steal an idea for your own benefit without regard to the originator of that idea. Here, Mr. Cohen joined an existing enterprise in which Mr Schroeder had a majority interest, and then took without permission or right Mr. Schroeder’s ideas, concepts, web application and technology.”

[via AllThingsD]

Back when the OneWed team formed their website for the desktop-based internet, they made it to be a blog, and they had honest-to-god bloggers writing for them on the daily. Speaking with TechCrunch about the history of the OneWed ecosystem, CEO John Scrofano noted this week that “We built [OneWed] on the back of this blogger model and the content we had produced…but what we were hearing our customers say is ‘we really love the pictures. Bloggers were writing all these articles for us, but really [users] just wanted the pictures.” Imagine that, right at the dawn of the tablet, too!

This company was originally called Nearlyweds, if you’re an old-school fan and remember such a thing, and is being re-launched as both OneWed.com and an iPad app that takes on the always lovely Massive Photo layout that you’ll be familiar with if you’re a fan of any number of photo blogging websites / apps. Here each product, wedding idea, and everything in-between is given its own page and links to relevant websites, details, and even connections to local retailers that have what you’re looking for in stock.

This app is completely free from the iTunes App Store right this minute and is currently available for iPad only. At the moment there’s no word of expansion to Android or the iPhone, but they’ve only just launched this month! Have a peek at let us know if you’re all about the wedding planning, even if you’ve already been wed, won’t get wed for a long number of years, or won’t get traditionally hitched ever!

Google doesn’t assign any particular ranking to these apps, so none of them are supposed to be considered “better” than the others. Some of them bring online storefronts to your device, while others are services that many users take advantage of on a daily basis. The majority of them are free to install, save for just one app on the list. In no particular order, here are Google’s best Android apps of 2012:

• Evernote
• Zappos
• Pinterest
• Grimm’s Snow White
• Expedia
• Pocket
• Ancestry
• Fancy
• Mint.com Personal Finance
• SeriesGuide Show Manager
• Pixlr Express
• TED

It isn’t very surprising to see Evernote and Pinterest show up on the list, and Zappos is a clear choice considering it seems to be pre-installed on nearly every Android device that comes through our doors. It’s good to see apps like Pocket, Fancy, and Pixlr Express get some much-deserved attention, and it seems that Google has delivered a list that’s quite diverse.

As diverse as it is, it notably doesn’t feature any games unless you want to count Grimm’s Snow White – an interactive storybook – as one. Perhaps Google will also release a list of its favorite Android games for 2012? Only time will tell, but for now, let us know if you use any of the apps listed in Google’s favorites for the year!

[via Google]

Instagram’s argument was that the Twitter Cards were poorly understood by users, and that it felt it would be served better by directing all visitors to its own site. That followed the launch of Instagram online profiles for all users, shifting some of the focus out of the app itself and onto the web.

Pinterest’s motivation for adopting Twitter Cards while others flee is unclear; the company has not made any public announcements about the functionality, which was simply spotted by user Kelly Liebermnan. Clicking on the preview takes you to the original post, while there’s an option underneath to directly follow the Pinterest Twitter account itself.

Whether the decision will come back to haunt Pinterest remains to be seen. The site has experienced rapid traffic growth, tapping into a market of eager sharers looking for shopping tips and new products.

[via Digital Trends]

This study in 2012 shows the top 10 social networks to be Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, WordPress, and Linedin to start, with Facebook equalling nearly three times the amount of unique PC visits over its first competitor, Blogger. The list of 10 continues with Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, MySpace, and Wikia, with each site from Linedin to Tumblr only having right around 1,000,000 unique visitors different between the two – but again, this is all via the PC market, people working from their desktop.

As for visitors from these social networks via their mobile browser presence, there’s a bit different story. Facebook remains in the lead, while Twitter takes over Blogger and Pinterest jumps 2 places to sit in a clear fourth. WordPress is the last of the top 5 with Linedin being the first with numbers under 10 million, it and Tumblr coming up short by less than 2 million each. The bottom three then are Wikia, Reddit, and MySpace – Reddit’s growth is notable at 153% over what it was a year before, the same for Tumblr at 162% over last year. Pinterest deserves the biggest applause in this category with a massive 4,225% growth rate year over year in the mobile app segment.

As for mobile users using apps, we’ve got a top 5 starting with Facebook and moving on the Twitter, then foursquare, Google+, and Pinterest. This chart shows that not only is Pinterest taking off like a rocket – winning the most improved in each category far and away, the whole mobile social network family is growing at a surprisingly fast rate. Have another peek at this study from a different perspective from earlier today.

[via Nielsen]

A Secret Board can be a private board that no one else has access to, allowing you to gather together images for your own use that no one else can see. Alternatively, the feature can also be set up so that certain users are authorized to view and interact with it. According to the announcement, the feature was launched today and is gradually be rolled out, with no details on what exactly that means.

Pinterest’s software engineer Evrhet Milam stated this in the announcement. “We hope that secret boards will make Pinterest even more useful. You can use secret boards to keep track of holiday gifts, plan a special event, or work on a project you aren’t yet ready to share with the rest of the world. You can keep your secret boards to yourself or invite family and friends to pin with you.”

Creating a private board seems pretty straight forward. Log into your Pinterest account, then click on your profile and scroll to the bottom of the page. Select “Create a Secret Board,” then click “Add+.” In the board creation screen, click “Create Board,” then be sure to switch the Secret button to the “On” position.

[via Pinterest]

Right off the bat, it’s obvious that the new Myspace is going to be quite the departure from the Myspace we’re used to. The focus on music and entertainment remains in tact, but user profiles are getting completely overhauled. What surprises us the most is how beautiful everything looks, especially when Myspace is coming from a layout that can’t exactly be described as “gorgeous.”

Looking at the video below, it seems that Myspace designers have drawn inspiration from the likes of Pinterest and Microsoft‘s Metro UI. Everything comes together to form a really sleek look, and call us crazy, but this redesign may just do something to bring users back to the service, which has been suffering at the hands of Facebook for years now. Speaking of Facebook, it seems that the new Myspace will sport Facebook and Twitter integration to some degree. It also adds things like a dedicated music player and a persistent navigation bar, so yeah, this is going to be a pretty massive redesign.

No word yet on when this new redesign will land, but those who are interested in this redesign can leave their email address to “request an invite.” It’s unclear whether that invite will be for a beta or the full blown launch of the new Myspace, but we’re tempted to think it’s the latter. What do you think of this new Myspace design? Is it enough to get you to return to the social network?

[via The Next Web]

Speaking of Samsung devices, we may have received our first glimpse at the front panel of the Samsung Galaxy Note II today, and a video of the Jelly Bean update for the Samsung Galaxy S III surfaced today as well. Looking at Samsung’s current court battle with Apple for a moment, Samsung delivered the argument many on its side were waiting for, saying that the iPhone’s design is “obvious.” HTC rallied employees today by saying that it’s coming back, Amazon might have a new Kindle Fire in the works, and we were treated to a mock up of what the rumored iPad Mini might look like if it, you know… existed.

Verizon will begin offering an LTE-enabled version of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 later this week, and a new SwiftKey update brings Google Voice recognition with it. Facebook is in trouble with data protection officials in Germany again, a reported iPad Mini dock connector surfaced today, and we happened upon some specs for the Motorola RAZR HD. Anonymous claimed today that it had hacked the PlayStation Network, but Sony was right there to say that it was all a hoax. Microsoft detailed the problems it’s currently having with the Windows Phone marketplace, and Pinterest revealed new apps for both Android and iOS, and if you’re planning to pick up, be sure to have a look at our review first.

LG announced that it has sold 5 million smartphones worldwide, and Netflix is about to roll out to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Nokia has reiterated its commitment to Windows Phone, and the Windows 8 RTM software build is now available. Finally tonight, the Waverider hypersonic aircraft has crashed during an Air Force test flight, and the Humble Indie Bundle for Android 3 is now available, so if you’re in need of some games, be sure to check that out!

That does it for the evening wrap-up everyone, so go and enjoy what’s left of Wednesday!

This application is free to download and is ready for your Retina display – if that’s the version of the iPad that you’ve got – but works perfectly well on all iterations of the iPad. You’ll need a Pinterest account to make it work, and signing up inside the app is simple too – you’ll just connect via Facebook or Twitter or make your own unique account just connected to Pinterest. Once you’re in, your account will be perfectly synced up no matter which device or app you’re in.

Pinterest is an environment in which users collect their favorite online items and “Pin” them to a board for everyone to see. Like Facebook, each person in your friends group is able to see your Pins along with the rest of their friends Pins in one giant news feed. This app makes doing all of this unique for your iPad instead of requiring that you use your iPad’s built-in web browser for access.

You can download this application for the iPad, the iPhone, or any Android device right this second – just search for “Pinterest” in your app store! The download is well worth the 15 seconds it’ll take to download, and it’ll make your Pinterest experience all the more engaging. If you’re not hooked up with Pinterest yet, also download the app – it’s an awesome experience for the casual iPad user too!

The company says it’s now making it easier for users to take their aspirations with them when they do things away from the computer by offering new and updated apps for the most common mobile devices out there. The Android app is available for download right now at Apps.pinterest.com. The app promises to make it simple and fast to pin things to your account.

Pinterest says that the app was specifically designed and developed to work well on Android smartphones and tablets with no matter how fast the device is or the size of the screen. Pinterest thinks that its new iPad app may be the best experience for the service yet. It allows the user to discover, save, and organize the things they like.

Pinterest says that iPhone users have been asking for the ability to see more pins. The updated iPhone app brings the two-column layout allows the user to see more of their content and find what they want more quickly. The updated iOS apps should be available in the App Store. Users should still be able to access Pinterest using the mobile website as well.

The social network has gained some momentum over the past several months, giving users a more visual way to share their finds among friends. The timing of the open registration is interesting given recent rumors that Apple is eyeing up a purchase of The Fancy, a service not too far removed from Pinterest.

Pinterest’s valuation has also soared over the past few months. Earlier this year, the social network was valued at around $1 billion, and more recently Japanese conglomerate Rakuten valued the company at around $1.5 billion after a $100 million round of funding. Rakuten has multiple ecommerce sites scattered around the internet, and the inclusion of the “Pin It” badge on any one of them will be sure to further raise the profile of Pinterest.

Still, if you’re not too fussed about the business side of things and just want to share content with your friends, Pinterest isn’t a bad way to go about it. Head on over to the website to sign up with your Twitter, Facebook, or email if you haven’t done so already.

This information is tied to elements of interest in The Fancy in its supposed edge over the still very much larger competing group Pinterest. One of these elements is their forward-thinking percentage cut they take of all sales pushed through their site – 10% – and their massive valuation and funding rounds from late last year. Last we checked, the company was valued at $100 million USD and were able to get a $10 million dollar funding round led by the conglomerate behind Gucci, PPR.

Other investors in the company behind The Fancy are Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Apple is very much in a position to start working with online sales of physical goods at the moment as they’ve just announced a new “PassBook” virtual wallet element for their upcoming mobile operating system iOS 6. A connection between a virtual wallet on the iPhone and an entertaining visual system such as The Fancy would be a massive step forward for Apple in the online shopping universe.

Another interesting element in this story is the fact that an Apple Store in New York City and The Fancy’s designated DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) agent Michael Silverman both reside in the same building. 401 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10014 is where you’ll find them both. Certainly just a coincidence, but interesting enough nonetheless.

One more bit of coincidence occurring today comes from TechCrunch writer Ingrid Lunden who points to the featured image on The Fancy today – an iPhone. This would be fabulously exciting if it weren’t for the fact that Apple products (and accessories from 3rd party groups) weren’t exceedingly popular on The Fancy on the regular.

And a third – this is Tim Cook’s Fancy account. It’s currently set to private, but he certainly has used it before. Right after he and the CEO of The Fancy met last year.

Stay tuned as Apple continues to set fires under the seats of companies left and right – even if this all turns out to be a rumor.

The list published by the analysis group also showed Google+ to be tied for first place in this list for customer satisfaction with Wikipedia, both groups grabbing an impressive 78% rating. Of course one must consider that Facebook has million more users than Google+ while Wikipedia has been at the top of this list since the company started recording such tests. Twitter was also low at 64%, with YouTube grabbing 73% and Pinterest ringing in at 69%.

The group ForeSee, partnering with ACSI for this survey, note that Facebook users mentioned the Timeline layout as one of their main reasons for being dissatisfied in this modern iteration of the social network. Furthermore Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee, had the following to say:

“Facebook and Google+ are competing on two critical fronts: customer experience and market penetration. Google+ handily wins the former, and Facebook handily wins the latter, for now. It’s worth asking how much customer satisfaction matters for Facebook, given its unrivaled 800 million user base … if Facebook doesn’t feel the pressure to improve customer satisfaction now, that may soon change.” – Freed

Of the three years this study has been run, this is Facebook’s lowest approval rating with 64% being their first year in 2010 and 66% showing up in 2011. This is accompanied by Facebook’s stock prices this week which have once again fallen as low as 27.04 a share – the lowest this stock has gotten is a bit below 25 a share.

Check out the timeline below to see how Facebook has done over the past few weeks, and keep in mind that the stock price is once again rising here in the middle of the week, currently reading out at 29.04 at the time of this posting – keep running!

All three of those companies, and hundreds more, rely on Web fidelity and storage from Amazon. It’s one of the less publicized offerings from the online retail giant, but that doesn’t make it less important. It helps to power some of the top websites on the Internet. The retailer confirmed to the Associated Press that there was damage to its operations as a result of the severe storms on Saturday.

By late afternoon, though, the problems were fixed and service was restored to affected clients and customers. It does help to remind users not to take their online services for granted. It also is a reminder that as everyone transitions from local storage to the cloud, that it is always a good idea to keep hard-copy back-ups of everything, because you never know what might take down the cloud.

[via USA Today]

Rakuten got involved with Pinterest following disucssions with CEO Ben Silbermann several months ago. Pinterest believed that Rakuten could help them in Japan, a big internet commerce market, as well as globally with the several commerce sites that Rakuten already owns, including Kobo, Play.com and Buy.com.

The deal will allow tight integration between the two companies, with Rakuten’s ecommerce sites soon to feature the “Pin It” badge, and the ability to pin products available on the various sites. Rakuten believes that search traffic coming from Pinterest is a major benefit, saying the targeted nature will help with conversion rates.

When asked about potential copyright infringement issues, Rakuten responded saying that Pinterest will ultimately overcome such problems, and that their intention “ is not to damage any brand. It’s a positive thinking and a positive way of promoting brands and images.”

[via Financial Times Blog]

Pinterest will continue to explode in popularity as it gains cash from investors around the world, this most recent round of investments allowing the company to keep up with its user demand behind the scenes. Announcements such as this also help the company grow in popularity as each investment adds to the confidence the user base has in the applications and environment in which Pinterest exists. Pinterest has seen a major explosion in user base numbers over the past year with a bit more than 6,000 percent traffic increase in the latter half of 2011.

Pinterest works like your everyday average social network in that it connects you to your best pals and associates through your shared interests, and drives growth in investor interest via its ability to feature products. In fact the main function of Pinterest right this minute is to share ideas and products between users, this opening the door for massive economic growth in the future as product placement’s inevitable insertion comes to a head. Stay tuned as Pinterest continues to grab the hearts of the social networking lovers of planet earth.

The app lets users create how-to guides, allowing them to easily incorporate pictures and videos. The idea is to post the guides online and share knowledge with others in a social and viral way. It has had integration with other networks like Facebook and Twitter from the outset, some three weeks ago. But now, recognizing the extreme growth and increasing importance of Pinterest, it has added that to the list.

Because Pinterest doesn’t have its own API, that means Snapguide had to work directly with the Pinterest team. In the end, though, the result is a product that works seamlessly for end users. As for whether or not there will be a Pinterest API any time soon, Snapguide founder Daniel Raffel told paidContent, “I am confident they are doing everything they can to give developers high-quality APIs to interact with. I’m sure some great news will be coming soon and that when they launch developers will be very happy.” Let’s hope. Having a strong API is now a crucial part of any social network.

[via paidContent]

Effective immediately, users who go to Vimeo.com or watch an embedded Vimeo video on any website have the ability to click “pin it” in the video player, to add the clip to their Pinterest account. This kind of functionality had already been possible with YouTube videos, so this is just another step forward as Pinterest continues its journey into universal social dominance.

Perhaps one of the greatest stories about Pinterest is the way it defied the odds. No doubt countless entrepreneurial minds looked at the social world and assumed they were just too late to make the next Facebook, but Pinterest proves that no matter how huge and competitive the market you’re trying to get into may be, if you build something that offers true value and differentiated features, people will notice.

[via VentureBeat]

Let’s paint that picture for you – in a matter of months, Pinterest leapfrogged ahead of well-established titans like LinkedIn and Tumblr, and insanely funded and marketed platforms like Google+. Back in December, Pinterest was ranked at the #10 spot in the list of top 10 social networks. It took just a few months to jump all the way to #3. And the good news for Pinterest – it has a marketer-friendly design from the outset. There’s no question about how to monetize the site given its focus.

Perhaps one of the greatest stories about Pinterest is the way it defied the odds. No doubt countless entrepreneurial minds looked at the social world and assumed they were just too late to make the next Facebook, but Pinterest proves that no matter how huge and competitive the market you’re trying to get into may be, if you build something that offers true value and differentiated features, people will notice.

[via VentureBeat]

Okay, so it isn’t actually Obama who’s pinning things. His campaign staff is managing the account, in an effort to showcase the commander in chief’s savvy with the young, connected generation. As of this afternoon, the Obama Pinterest account already had more than a thousand followers and had pinned a couple dozen articles including family recipes and political-themed content.

Pinterest could be the next big thing in social media. Last month, the site reported 17.8 million unique visitors, representing a steep climb from previous months and catapulting it to the #3 status on Comscore’s list of highest-gaining online properties. Being connected to social media is, of course, a must in the political world these days. Every major candidate in the Republican side of things has an official Youtube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter account. But Obama’s the only one who has jumped on Pinterest.

[via VentureBeat]

A recent report from comScore placed Pinterest in third place for amount of time spent on a website by users – 98 minutes per month on average amongst the users comScore polled. This sits the site behind only Facebook and Tumblr for minutes per month used on average – a feat in an of itself! The recent jump in users has spurred not just a bonus for the site in its userbase, but in the feedback they’re receiving on a regular basis now as well.

Feedback received over the past few weeks and months has made a case for the designers of Pinterest to modify the site for the better here in the first quarter of 2012. The site will soon be updated with a “more beautiful” set of aesthetics, as Silbermann noted today in Texas. This redesign will also feature users’ influencers more prominently and will lend itself to a brand new design for the first iPad-compatible app, also coming out soon!

Have a peek at a hands-on video with Pinterest for iPhone now and get yourself prepped for the iPad version coming out soon. Also check out Pinterest.com now if you haven’t already!

[via WLWT]

To help diffuse the copyright concerns Pinterest has introduced new code the website owners can integrate that will prevent Pinterest users from being able to pin the sites content to their profiles. The simple code is dubbed NOPIN and appears to be a meta-tag. What happens when a visitor attempts to pin content to Pinterest from a site running this code is a message will pop up telling them pinning is not allowed.

I for one still don’t understand why a company wouldn’t want people to share their goods even if that sharing involves photos. I think many companies are going overboard with their copyright concerns. I can only imagine that blocking people from pinning things to Pinterest or sharing them on Facebook will hurt the brand in the end.

[via Forbes]