Earlier this month, Pinterest announced a future app update that will include pins allowing users to directly purchase a pinned item from within the platform. This new feature seems like a boon for retailers – less work to purchase means pinners are more likely to actually buy – but what will this decision bring for casual users who primarily pin for inspiration and ideas?
The app already contains Promoted Pins, cluttering searches with irrelevant results based on which businesses have invested in advertising on the site. How will Buyable Pins compare?
Buyable pins will be integrated into regular, familiar keyword searches to appear alongside some 50 billion existing pins. When you create a search, the results will immediately display a carousel of these Buyable Pins that have been purchased and promoted by retailers. At the end of this carousel, you can “see more” or continue on to regular results.
In this list of results, and in each instance of displaying related pins, buyable and promoted pins will be sprinkled in with user-created pins, with products available to buy through the app marked with a blue price and a blue “Buy Now” button.
This idea has potential, but less for user discovery and more for retailers. Adding Buyable Pins while someone searches for a specific item might just make buying that item a little too easy. Utilizing Apple Pay and other trusted payment processors, it quite literally requires only one touch before that $1,300 dining room table is on its way to your doorstep.
While this saves the extra strenuous step of looking up the item yourself, it seems Pinterest has actually devised a sneaky outlet for retail therapy. The number of smartphone users combined with the number of impulsive internet shoppers might just create a monstrous hole in the pockets of its community.
The app will include a price range slider, however, so we can avoid items we want but cannot have or afford, but it seems like there will be no way to filter search results to avoid Buyable Pins entirely. This means sorting through search results, which may already contain irrelevant items, and that will also soon contain pins that function as ads.
Pinterest claims its content is “hand-picked by people like you,” but it seems that in the case of Buyable Pins, the sweet smell of instant gratification makes it okay for retailers (I guess they’re people, too?) to nose their way into our searches and take our money along the way.
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