Pinterest, the social network again that lets users to “pin” photos, products, websites and other things for virtual visibility by others has now started to remove third-party marketing links, maybe it is the way for it to boost up its revenue.
As announced by Pinterest, it is to remove all affiliate links, trackers and redirects on pins just before the launch of its rumoured ‘Buy’ button scheduled for later this year. Pinterest stating on this move has notified its users that this removal of affiliates and redirects is to have Pinterest functioning smoothly and quickly thereby preventing ‘rich pins’ from breaking.
As confirmed by CNET, Pinterest told its “power pinners” that no removal of pins would be done whereas only affiliate links, redirects, or trackers are to be excluded. Pinterest now with the popularity of about 70 million users has invited marketing agencies to crop up more in a way to link with people who pin content with brands actively. These “power pinners” as requested by a brand to create boards around a particular topic and when people visiting the pins click on them are redirected to the brand’s site. This way, power pinners get paid for their work while the brands get a new mode to market to potential customers.
These affiliate links on the other hand have also opened up for irrelevant pins to get in feeds along with broken links and of course there are other spammy behavior happening which the company wants to put an end to. This news from Pinterest has made bloggers to uproar as they make money by sharing photos of products and earn some commission percentage on sales of these products as and when shoppers click through them and buy the items.
Pinterest in a statement to CNET mentioned that this move is not to limit the way other companies earn via Pinterest users but to enhance the experience of using the service. The company denotes that this is mainly to stop “spammy behavior” as it recently spotted some abuse by third-party networks that is not healthy for the site. As told by a Pinterest spokesman, the company is doing this in a way to ensure that they are providing the best possible experience for its Pinners.
All these being aside, the main reason as rumored could be due to Pinterest finding opportunities to make revenue off its site. With its user base grown the company is trying to make the best use of it to make money for its profit. On this regard comes the announcement that Pinterest is to soon get a ‘Buy’ button with which users would be able to buy products that they find on Pinterest within the website or app directly.
As reported by Re/code, the Buy button on Pinterest might pop up within three to six months. According to the report, this button is to let users order and pay for products that are pinned to Pinterest boards without the need to leave the company’s website or app. This feature is to transform Pinterest to an e-commerce site making it directly compete with Amazon. However, as per report the company might not control the shipping process.
With regards to payment process Pinterest is to seal an agreement with Stripe, says the report. If remembered, Stripe is a payments startup that already has partnerships with the likes of Facebook, Apple and Twitter.
By the way this move could not be considered a surprise as analysts, industry observers and users have been waiting for Pinterest to get transformed into an e-commerce platform ever since it got launched in 2010.
While the company has still not confirmed of the move, if it is to then it can be very well considered as a natural evolution of Pinterest. Pinterest with its ‘Promoted Pins’ already makes money. It is with this ‘Promoted Pins’, big brands are allowed to pay for their products to appear outstandingly in search results. Pinterest latest introduction is an ‘Install’ button with which users can download iPhone and iPad apps from within Pinterest.
Just a day after Pinterest introducing App Pins that enables users to download from the App Store the iOS apps without leaving the service, this news of it banning affiliate links and to get “Buy” button gets revealed.
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