Celebrating Black History Month at Pinterest!
At Pinterest, we believe having a diverse team will help drive our business objectives further and deliver a better product to our community. While we still have work to do, our company has significantly moved the needle and simultaneously increased a sense of belonging across our team. I’m proud our company was able to achieve several milestones over the past year, including reaching over 200 million monthly active users and the debut of several visual discovery tools to help people discover and do the things they love. To celebrate Black History Month, we’re highlighting black culture, history and icons on a dedicated board to educate, as well as offering a fun, interactive experience for Pinners: an in-product easter egg.
Launching today, here’s how it works: Anytime a user types in the search box on Pinterest about “#blackhistorymonth,” the colors of the pan-African diaspora flag will appear and the board of ‘Pins to celebrate Black History Month’ will show up in your search results (see below). Related terms — for example Black culture, Martin Luther King, etc. — will also yield the board in your search results. This is the first time we’ve created this type of product interaction to help people discover more Black History Month related content on Pinterest.
Our inspiration was to celebrate different cultures that make up our community. And with the millions of people our platform touches, we see hundreds of thousands of searches and saves on important cultural topics every day. In fact last February we received nearly a quarter of a million searches on Dr. Martin Luther King alone; this is an important time for many to reflect and celebrate Black culture and history.
The Black History Month board’s Pins are sourced from our community of Pinners, as well as blackboard, our employee community made up of African-American employees and others across the company. blackboard’s mission is to aid in recruiting and retaining top Black talent in tech, while ensuring Black culture and experience is represented within the company as well as in the product — this month and every month. Right now, teams across Pinterest are working to enrich content from underrepresented cultures on our platform so that users see the most relevant results for their life and interests.
A Pinner named Brittany Holloway-Brown, featured on Mic.com, told us about her experience stepping out of her comfort zone and trying new fashion-forward styles based what she saw on Pinterest. She grew an affinity for wearing bright colored looks, loud patterns and bold makeup after seeing a Pin from Into the Gloss that featured a black model who wore emerald green eyeshadow and a glossy nude lip. People like Brittany come to Pinterest to find ideas every day, which is why we’re focused on constantly improving our platform by integrating inclusion and diversity efforts to deliver personalized experiences for Pinners.
Lastly, we want to thank each of you for adding ideas you are passionate about to your boards, which then becomes an idea that someone thousands of miles away can incorporate into their lives. Here’s to discovering and doing something new.
