Picked for You

For anyone who has yet to discover the joys of Pinterest, I will explain for context. First off, if you’ve been living under a rock and have never heard of Pinterest, it is a website where you can discover and collect websites for items that attract your interest. It provides links, typically a picture and a short description, for these websites that you can “like” or save to your categorized “boards.” If you click on the pin/link, it will take you directly to the web source from where the pin was obtained. The categories of boards include everything from fashion, food, health, humor, and anything at all that you may find several websites for a topic that you would like to save and be able to revisit. Hence, you pin your interests to the boards…Pinterest…Get it? So, there is a homepage that will show you thousands of pins that your friends and people you follow have recently saved. If you look at the very bottom of the pin, it will tell you who it was that pinned it. However, when you begin to visit Pinterest regularly (which is typical once you uncover all of the endless procrastination possibilities it has to offer!!), the website begins to ascertain your likes. In other words, while you discover the website, the website discovers you. Amongst the pins on your homepage that your friends have saved, you may also see pins that say, “picked for you.”

Much like many websites in the online world, the more you visit, the more it can track who you are as an individual simply by the way you use the website. This is known as big data. It tracks your searches and collects data from your online usage that can be used to target you and appeal to your specific interests. It is not intentionally done to be creepy, although it may feel personally invasive, but it is done in order to attract your attention so that you will want to continue to return to their website. Adding to the creepiness factor, however, Pinterest has begun to not only tell you the pins that it has specially “picked for you” but it can surmise exactly which board of yours into which the pin would be the perfect fit. For instance, I have a board called “Quotes to Remember” where I like to save all of the inspirational quotes that I come across and wish to save for a day when I need little motivational reminders. On my Pinterest homepage, I can now see pinned quotes and a prompt at the bottom to put it on my Quotes to Remember board.

Companies have begun to recognize the boundless advertising possibilities that Pinterest provides from the millions of pinners who visit the website daily. These companies use Pinterest as a platform to collect big data from pinners and directly target consumers with their advertisements. The ads are posted to the Pinterest website and appear as though they are just another pin, but the company promoting the pin is revealed at the bottom. As more and more companies realize the value of promoting through Pinterest, it will be interesting to see just how directed companies can make their pins to target individual Pinterest users.