A possible negative for Pinterest made me very sad today. I absolutely love Pinterest. It is becoming the favored social media platform and I’d be lying if I didn’t say, I have fallen in love as well. I have found it to be a great way to find what you are looking for quickly and to spark ideas that wouldn’t have normally been found just searching Google. This morning, I checked my Pinterest account as I normally do and found a downfall that I hadn’t seen since I have had my Pinterest account starting back in July. Blogs and articles continually state that Pinterest is driving more traffic to websites than Google+, You Tube and LInkedin all together.
This has been very exciting news over the past few weeks. But this morning, there was something different and I was saddened by what I saw. The top half of my screen in my Pinterest account was not covered by gorgeous pictures, quotes and ideas, it looked like one big ad. It was people’s ebooks, “pin it to win it’ ads, people’s services offering free this and free that. Will Pinterest become one huge advertisement? Will my new love on how to search for things vanish into thin air. I am already annoyed watching videos on YouTube by all the advertisements that pop up. Will Pinterest turn into the same thing? Just like my disappointment when Facebook started adding all the ads to our pages every where, I do believe this will start happening to Pinterest as well. My entire screen was covered in pins that looked spammed with ads and call to actions. How disappointing to start my Monday.
Right now, the only thing Pinterest states is that there can be no nudity (which some of the fitness pictures are pushing the envelope on this) and no continuous self promotion. Nudity is pretty easy to see, but can Pinterest really stop self promotion? How many boards will dictate self promotion? Will they say over half your boards can not be business oriented? Will they say you can only have a certain number of pins per day? I find myself on Pinterest more than Facebook and Twitter now but this morning with 15 ebook offers and 25 contests, I was completely turned off and disappointed. It is ones decision with who they follow and I do fore see myself unfollowing people if I see too many ads but I could potentially give up on Pinterest if it becomes just one big ad campaign.
It is funny, I don’t think I would mind if people marketing their business found unique and hip pictures, and titles that made me want to click their pictures, but book titles and contests are not why I go on Pinterest. Of course it took a while for other social media platforms to get to the point where ads and have over taken them, so we do have a while to enjoy PInterest, but I do believe that they will follow down the same path.
Advertising is how these platforms make money. It just is sad to enjoy something new so much and see very clearly what it is going to become. How long before PInterest is saturated with uninteresting pins and every click is another contest, another gimmick to win a free ipad? Content will need some caps put on. How many ads will we have to look at? How much self promotion will be allowed? When I log on, I certainly don’t want to see the same person’s ebook 42 times all posted to different boards or 150 items in the same companies catalog.
It is not normal that I start out a Monday with a blog that seems to be ranting but I did learn something of value today. I will limit any time of promotion of my direct sales business to a certain amount. I will share ideas and content and hope that people will want to follow my boards instead of “unfollow” them because of continuous promotions. Right now most of Pinterest’s users are female, focus will need to be put on widening that market. The videos are a huge area that could be organized better to appeal to male users and reaching the status of Facebook or Twitter. Either way, I am hopes that users and advertisers keep Pinterest the way it was when it attracted so many people to it. Although it is a huge sky rocketer in the Social Media arena, it could start turning people away or having people “unfollowed” if too many self promotion ads take over.
What do you think? How did your Pinterest page look this morning? I’d love to hear.
