Pinterest Debuts Story Pins, Other Tools Aimed at Influencers

Pinterest is debuting two features intended for lifestyle influencers: Story Pins, which is similar to the increasingly popular stories feature available on Snapchat, Instagram and other platforms; and “creator profiles,” which allow influencers to show off their work. For Story Pins, which is already available to a select group of influencers, the creator can post photos and vertical videos with overlaid text and voice-over narration but doesn’t need to link to an outside website. Story Pins are not ephemeral, and followers can comment and react to them. Creator Profiles highlight projects via Story Pins.

Engadget points out that, “any of the creative endeavors people most associate with Pinterest — recipes, crafting, decorating — lend themselves to casual, first-person video,” but adds that “it’s difficult to imagine that influencers would choose Pinterest over YouTube (where they can monetize their videos directly), Instagram (where their following is more established) or TikTok (where the right clip can go viral much more quickly with the help of the app’s algorithm).”

Although Pinterest isn’t offering a way to monetize Story Pins, the tool “comes with analytics, in case a creator wants to strike their own brand deal and allows them to direct traffic back to a blog or online shop.” It isn’t yet clear, however, “if or when Pinterest plans to make the feature available to all its users, not just the ‘creators’ who can attract a bigger audience.”

CNBC reports that, “Story Pins will allow ‘creators’ to post nearly full-screen photos and videos to their profiles … [which] make it possible to create step-by-step stories, such as tutorials for recipes or DIY projects.” The feature “will be rolled out as an invitation-only feature,” and Pinterest stated that, “it will enforce higher standards for Story Pins than for other content.” It notes that Snapchat “innovated the feature in 2013 and Facebook’s Instagram copied it in 2016.”

They have since been joined by Twitter’s Fleets and LinkedIn’s tests for its own version “in certain markets this year.” Pinterest head of creator products David Temple said Story Pins won’t have ads but, “there’s still plenty of revenue potential with the format.” Other new features, in addition to creator profiles, are “an engagement tab that will allow creators to quickly respond to other users, and an updated analytics hub that will show creators the performance of their pins.”

Instructions for creating and editing Story Pins are available on the Pinterest Help page.

Related:
Pinterest Makes Play for Influencers With New Story Pins Feature, Glossy, 9/24/20
Pinterest Launching a ‘Story Pins’ Video Format, The Motley Fool, 9/23/20

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