Re-Discovering Pinterest
Most people browse on the internet but they forget and do not remember what they read and where they read it. Another such instance is images. We always find funny or interesting images on the internet and when we need to share it with someone we can’t find them or forget the search queries we entered on Google to find the said image(s).
Pinterest is a website for collecting and sharing media in the form of images and sharing it with others through Facebook or Twitter or to just save it in your profile to come back to at a later time. I had never used Pinterest to research information before. But when I typed the name on Google, I found out many articles showing how Pinterest had grown to be one of the most famous websites and apps to share content with others and to also plan occasions such as weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and other engagements or to just get an idea of the trending fashion at each point of the year.
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann summarized the company as a “catalog of ideas,” rather than as a social network, that inspires users to “go out and do that thing.”
The number of categories on Pinterest is just astounding. The amount of information that can be gathered from the pins are increasing everyday. People all around the world use Pinterest to look up at merchandise and it spurs them to go to the respective websites and order the item that was shared on Pinterest. By the end of 2016, Pinterest had 150 million monthly active users on their website and app and the numbers keep increasing.
Joining Pinterest
When you go on to the Pinterest landing page for the very first time, you are asked to create an account by entering a username and a password. There are also other options of creating a Pinterest account by signing in with your Facebook or Google credentials. When you click on Facebook or Google, a popup appears and you are asked to provide your Facebook or Google credentials.
If you already have an account with Pinterest, you can click on the Log In button on the top right corner of the page which loads on to the Login page where you can enter your username and password.
Once you click next, Pinterest asks you for your full name, age and your gender. When this is done, you can click Sign up to get into the account. When you are using the Google Chrome browser, Pinterest suggests you to download the Pinterest button as an extension to Chrome. It also explains how the button helps you to save items(ideas) easily and access the bookmarks from any window of the browser.
If you do accept to install the button, it takes you to the Pinterest browser button page where it asks your permission to install the button onto your browser. You are notified that the Pin It button has been installed and that you are ready to Pin items from the web.
But however, when you are done installing the Pin It button, you are not reloaded to the page where you can continue to setup your profile.
If you did not install the Pinterest Pin It button, you are taken to the next step of on boarding. The Pinterest page loads and you are asked to select 5 or more categories to see what you are interested in.
Once you have selected the categories that you are interested in, Pinterest loads your page with the most popular images from the categories you selected. From here, users can browse images from categories under the Explore menu or by using the search function on the top of every page and pin or save items and also share them with their friends or other users. The pinned items can be viewed from the User’s profile under Boards, Pins or Tried sub-categories.
The Experience of On Boarding
From an on boarding perspective, the process of signing up for Pinterest is fairly easy for all users. Signing up with Facebook or Google is much easier than creating an account with an email account as it asks you to verify the information provided by logging onto the mail account and clicking on the Verify link. Adding the Pin It button onto the browser creates challenges as it takes the user away from the Pinterest page and does not reload back to the Pinterest page.
