iPad App Lets You Create Collages With Your Pinterest Pins

Want to get more creative with Pinterest? Now you can, thanks to Bazaart.

The startup has released a free iPad application that lets you collage your pins, as well as those of other users on the network. It’s easy to find, add, resize, rotate and otherwise assemble your collage. You can also add borders to images or select “crop” to remove white space.

The app isn’t perfect: If you have a board with more than 25 pins, you won’t be able to load them all. (Gili Golander, Bazaart’s fashion director, tells me this is a result of Pinterest’s RSS feed limitation, and there’s nothing they can do about it.) The crop button tends to completely erase light-colored images. An “undo” button would be a welcome addition as well. But it’s a nice start.

Beyond collaging, the Bazaart app is also a decent Pinterest client: You can explore other boards, repin items and pull up their source pages — meaning that all of the products pins are also shoppable within the app.

The app’s creators are apart of the DreamIt Ventures accelerator program for Israeli startups in New York. This is the second app they have built atop Pinterest. The first, Pinvolve, lets Facebook Page administrators quickly transfer their content to Pinterest.

Facebook Tests Pinterest-Like Design for App Activity

Facebook is testing a new layout for Open Graph app stories that look reminiscent of one of the most popular apps out there: Pinterest.

The new design gives app stories a little more face-time on your News Feed, and gives you the ability to do things like comment or like a particular element of a story.

For instance, one example we found of the new design showed a number of items a friend had recently liked on Etsy. Photos of each are displayed in a Pinterest-like grid on the screen, and buttons below each allow you to comment of or like each individual photo.

App-specific actions can also be incorporated into the process. Inside Facebook noticed the feature on a Foodspotting post and found that when clicking on stories you could also “want a dish” directly from your News Feed.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Mobile Now Lets You Edit Recent Activity 

Currently the feature appears to only be for applications that are heavily photo based, and only appears to be available for some users. 

7 Tips to Generate Leads Online with Pinterest

In case you haven’t noticed, Pinterest is hot. In just the last year, the virtual pinboarding site has seen its web traffic grow from 700,000 unique visitors to 20 Million - half the unique visitors of Twitter. According to data from Compete’s Online Shopper Intelligence Survey, 1 in 4 consumers acknowledge that they are spending less time on other social media sites in favor of Pinterest. Brands are finding that a presence on Pinterest translates into sales. Roughly 25% of consumers reported purchasing a product or service after discovering it on Pinterest. Long presumed to be a social site dominated by women, Compete’s survey found that that 37% of males bought a product or service after seeing it on Pinterest, as opposed to just 17% of females.

SEE ALSO: Pinterest's Billionaire Backer Talks Facebook, E-Readers And Global Expansion

The muscular traffic growth of Pinterest, coupled with the strong tendency of users to eventually purchase items discovered on the site, should be enough for marketers and business owners to sit up and take notice. Admittedly, from a workflow perspective, nobody wants to deal with another social network.

However, if these numbers have left you convinced, here are 7 tips to pin your way to the top

• Post Blog Images: Get in the habit of pinning the main images from each of your blogs.  Make sure to link each image back to the related blog post, and included CTAs and landing pages to capture prospect lead data.

 

• Info-Graphics: People love data that’s put into a visual format. Challenge your graphic designer to take company or industry data points and convert them into a compelling info-graphic.

 

• eBook and Whitepaper Covers: If your company has created an ebook or whitepaper, take the front cover and pin it onto your Pinterest brand page. As with blog images, make sure to link it to the corresponding eBook/whitepaper, and include a CTA and landing page.

 

• Photos of Satisfied Customers: Prospects love to see pics of happy customers. As an added bonus, link any pinned photos back to case studies or positive user reviews you’ve gotten from these happy campers. Just make sure to get permission from your customers first!

 

• Use Hashtags: Pinterest supports hashtags to make your content more search-friendly. If you’re promoting a new campaign or launching a new product/service, create a pinboard around it. Make sure to tag it with the same hashtag you’re using on Twitter and Google+ to synch your social marketing efforts.

 

• Create a Video Gallery: Many people don’t know that you can pin videos on Pinterest. In fact, the site’s homepage has a separate tab for videos. Make sure to add any business-related videos you may currently have on your website or YouTube to your Pinterest brand page. As with YouTube, you’ll want to add links and CTAs to give prospects a simple path down the sales funnel.

 

• Measure Results: As you add more images to Pinterest, use any analytics tools at your disposal to measure web traffic and lead generation performance in order to discern which images are working and which aren’t. Try to find patterns in successes and failures, so you can pin image and video content that is most likely to generate leads and convert sales.

Pinterest's Billionaire Backer Talks Facebook, E-Readers And Global Expansion

Hiroshi Mikitani is a force of nature in the world of online retail. The billionaire and CEO of Rakuten a company often referred to as the Amazon.com of Japan  recently took part in a $100 million funding round in the colorful, photo sharing site Pinterest, which he describes as “still in the process of defining its business model.” The billionaire is working on turning that investment into a strategic partnership, one that will see more opportunities for link marketers and sending potential shoppers to Rakuten sites. Mikitani knows he has to play this carefully. If Pinterest’s mostly-female users sense their image sharing site is being curated into a gaudy shopping arcade, they’ll switch off.

All the same, Mikitani is pushing forward with an aggressive expansion strategy. Before Pinterest, he’d made a raft of international investments: Britain’s Play.com, Brazil’s Ikeda, Germany’s Tradoria and Buy.com in the U.S., not to mention the acquisition of the e-reader Kobo. But Rakuten’s global growth strategy is not “aggressive enough,” he said in a recen interview with Forbes. “We need to expand the scope of our service.” Clearly this is a man with great ambitions. Here’s the interview in full, in which Mikitani extols his views on discovery shopping, integrating his company more deeply with Pinterest and not disturbing the customer experience:

Mikitani: We have been creating this totally different internet shopping environment compared with the other major shopping e-commerce players. What we have been doing is creating the platform to empower the shops, or merchants, to create a unique store, using a platform, and creating fans around them. Our merchants are not just the seller, they are at the same time a curator of selling a product. We let them get connected with the consumers through e-mail, sometimes throughs social media, so that was something we are so excited about – creating a more unique and personal shopping experience and re-creating the new connection of the consumer and the seller.

But you also find the graphical interface of Pinterest interesting?

Yes. Pinterest is not that popular in Japan yet, but through my network, from the early stages I knew about Pinterest. I have been following them, I use it, and started to realize this is a totally different social media. It’s difficult to generalize social media. Pinterest and Facebook are very different. Pinterest is about connecting people’s interest, from art deco to fashion. You find people with similar interests… and we’re expanding and getting connections with the people who have the same interest. Therefore all these people can become curators. Sometimes not for e-commerce but for some kind of activities, or just talking about some shared interests… That kind of discovery experience, we can extend to discovery shopping. We’re not just about the convenience, but connecting with consumers and also curating the product. So I thought there was a very strong cultural and strategic fit with Pinterest.

It seems like Facebook has struggled to add a layer of e-commerce to its site. Does Pinterest have an edge over Facebook in its ability to add an e-commerce layer?

Facebook has mass, and Pinterest in terms of scale is smaller than Facebook by definition. It’s about scale versus depth. With depth, Pinterest definitely has an advantage and vice versa. The majority of users in Pinterest are female, whereas as Facebook is cross-gender. They are totally different.

This Pinterest-Like Bookmarking Tool Organizes Your Online Life

How many times did you have to search for something online that you forgot to save the first time you found it? Probably too many times to count.

To help you organize your life online, Clipix gives you a place to keep everything you find that you want to come back to in the future. Whether it’s news articles, recipes or shoes, Clipix lets you save it onto personalized clipboards.

It’s simple to use just drag the “clip” button to your bookmark bar. When you find something you’re interested in online, clip it to a clipboard. Users can also upload PDF files and Word and Excel documents.

Items without an image can also be added  all users have to do is give it a name and clip it.

Clipix is also useful for items that are too expensive for immediate purchase. In those cases, you can save items onto clipboards and set desired purchase prices. Clipix tracks the item online and sends you a notification e-mail once it reaches the preferred price.

The site’s collaboration feature also allows users to share clipboards with friends. When a friend adds something to the clipboard, all of the other friends see it in real-time.

 SEE ALSO: Pin It to Give It: Beauty Brand Tries Pinterest Philanthropy

Users can make their clipboards private, public or visible to only friends. To prevent copyright issues, Clipix adds a watermark stamp labeled “copyright protected” onto everything its users save to clipboards.

In the future, Clipix plans to base its business model on commisions from purchases made through its website.

Unlike Pinterest, Clipix is not a social network. The site aims to offer users a place to organize their online life, rather than share all of their clipboards with other users.

Clipix was founded in February 2012, and is also available as an iPhone and Android app. The company has raised more than $5 million in funding and has approximately 45,000 users.

Pin It to Give It: Beauty Brand Tries Pinterest Philanthropy

Beauty brand Elizabeth Arden is launching the first “Pin It to Give It” campaign on Pinterest, building on the popularity of “Pin It to Win It” campaigns.

Elizabeth Arden will donate one eyeliner for every repin from their Pin It to Give It board to longtime philanthropic partner Look Good Feel Better, a group focused on helping female cancer patients feel beautiful during their treatment. The brand is committed to donating up to 10,000 products, one for every repin using the hashtag #PinItToGiveIt in the caption.

“Our Pin It to Give It campaign is a new, innovative way to motivate and inspire women to make a difference in the lives of those struggling with cancer,” says Francine Gingras, vice president of global public relations for Elizabeth Arden. “The role that cosmetics play in the lives of women affected by cancer is really medicine for the soul. Color is critical and Pinterest gives users the ability to share colorful imagery, making it a natural fit for our Pin It To Give It program.”

 SEE ALSO: YouTube Joins Pinterest: Here’s What It’s Pinning

The campaign kicks off June 27 and runs through July 25.

Considering the rapid spread of Pin It to Win It marketing campaigns, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Pin It to Give It campaigns take off as well. If the campaign generates positive buzz, Look Good Feel Better will receive products while Elizabeth Arden spreads its name on the popular social network. What do you think: Is this a sustainable model for Pinterest philanthropy?

YouTube Joins Pinterest: Here’s What It’s Pinning

YouTube is getting in on the Pinterest action by launching an account of its own, the online video company announced Thursday.

Videos will be posted to one of several Pinterest YouTube boards themed around topics including crafts, lifestyle tips, beauty, food and fitness.

YouTube says it will also have numerous additional boards categorizing the videos it posts.
In Thursday’s post on YouTube’s blog, the company points out that it already has accounts on other major social networking sites including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Pinterest made video pinning available in August 2011; its users have been pinning videos from YouTube since that time.

 SEE ALSO: Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud

It makes sense that the video sharing site which gets 72 hours of video uploaded every minute would want to leverage Pinterest’s large and growing following of reportedly up to 21 million unique visitors per month.

Pinterest was one of the fastest growing social networks ever this spring. In fact, Pinterest users spend more time on the site than Facebook. The majority of those users are mothers, of whom 28% have a household income greater than $100,000 per year, according to Modea, a digital advertising agency.

YouTube garners a lot of traffic through the other social media sites it’s on. Time will tell how much traffic the mega video sharing site will get from its new Pinterest account.

Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud

After Pinterest‘s trove of copyrighted content became the subject of a legal debate, the popular social site made efforts to automatically add citations to content from specific sources. On Wednesday, it announced that it had expanded this practice to five new sites.

Since May, the feature had added citations to any content Pinned from Flickr, YouTube, Behance or Vimeo. Now content Pinned from photography community 500px, Etsy, Kickstarter, Slideshare and SoundCloud will enjoy the same automatic citations which can’t be edited.

Although Pinterest’s Terms of Use prohibit its members from posting copyrighted material without permission, it doesn’t take more than a quick look at the site to notice that most of its content violates these terms.

Some have suggested that the large amount of copyrighted, unattributed content that has been copied to Pinterest’s servers creates a legal problem for the site.

Pinterest may be shielded from responsibility for what its users upload, but knowingly facilitating copyright infringement, according to the Wall Street Journal, could result in a Napster-like lawsuit.

“It sure sounds like copying people’s photographs without authorization would be copyright infringement,” wrote photographer Sean Locke in February. “Yet, Pinterest seems to be encouraging people to scour the web, pinning (copying to their servers) artwork created by others.”

The same month, Pinterest offered content creators an opt-out option that prevents their content from being Pinned. It also added a 500-character limit to descriptions in order to prevent users from posting entire articles and blog posts.

Pinterest’s attribution option is a more cooperative approach to protecting content creators, and sites such as Flickr among the first to install the opt-out code  have embraced it.

But attribution isn’t instant permission to use copyrighted content. Would you like to see Pinterest go further in its efforts to protect content creators? Or are you happy with the solutions they’ve created?