Bits Blog: Pinterest Allows Users to Opt-Out of Being Tracked

The Gospel According to Pinterest

Ever since the wartime British propaganda poster bearing those soothing words went viral a few years ago, ending up on iPhone cases and coffee mugs, design types have been searching for the next great hyperlinked homily.

Lately, the leading candidates are popping up in the most unlikely of places: Pinterest. The explosively popular image-sharing site has fallen under the spell of words — that is, quotes from the great minds that offer lessons to live by.

In addition to sumptuous pictures of platform pumps, chalkboard-painted refrigerators and salted caramel shortbread, Pinterest is now jammed with inspirational quotes, some of which could have been lifted from fortune cookies.

“Love All, Trust a Few, Do Wrong to No One” (by William Shakespeare), is making the rounds these days. So is: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious” (Albert Einstein).

Such pop-philosophy quotes, which seem to emanate from design-driven corners of the Web, serve as a form of group therapy on Pinterest. They have become so popular that a Quotes category was spun off in July, and now accounts for about 10 percent of Pinterest’s traffic, according to estimates by Repinly.com, an independent online directory that compiles data on Pinterest trends (Pinterest does not release such data).

Virtual verities, it seems, are as hot as ombré hair and fingernail art. It’s as if Hallmark greetings suddenly got hip.

“Inspirational quotes are wildly popular on Pinterest right now,” said Christine Martinez, 31, who runs a design blog, Miles to Style, in Oakland, Calif., and has 3.7 million followers on Pinterest. Repinly currently ranks her as the ninth most popular pinner on the site.

A pithy quotation with compelling visuals can boost Web traffic, added Ms. Martinez, who, like a lot of Pinterest users, maintains a “Words to Live By” section on her Pinterest page, featuring quotations by E. E. Cummings, Picasso and, yes, Rachel Zoe.

This summer, she pinned a quotation from Elizabeth Taylor (“Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together”) from a Tumblr called Sequins & Stripes. It was rendered on a poster-style graphic in cursive, and was “repinned” — that is, reposted by other users — 10,000 times, more than 20 times her typical street-style pin.

It is not a trend that Pinterest executives foresaw. “Pinterest is designed to be a visual experience,” said Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based company, adding, “We were surprised by the popularity of these quotes.”

This being Pinterest, these homilies were given graphic design makeovers, either on actual posters, greeting cards, T-shirts or often as JPEGs that show up first on Tumblr or other blogs. Then they get picked up and passed around on Pinterest, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Typical examples include Barbara Kruger-inflected diktats (“You Are Not Famous. Get Over It.”) delivered in bold white letters against a red background. Other hot text-based pins are images of tattoos with thought-provoking messages (say, “Choose Not a Life of Imitation”) or uplifting mantras (“The Pressure Is Good for You”) expressed as neon art, with a nod to Bruce Nauman.

Bonnie Tsang, 38, a photographer and blogger in Los Angeles who ranks as Pinterest power-user No. 4 with more than 5.6 million followers, sees heavy traffic with these dressed-up quotations. A recent repin showing a black-and-white photo from the early ’70s of John Lennon and Yoko Ono holding a white placard that reads “Don’t Hate What You Don’t Understand!” was then passed along more than 1,600 times.

“The ones that get many repins usually have to do with boosting our self-esteem and self-love,” Ms. Tsang said. Her favorites include “I Think I Like Who I Am Becoming,” which she herself turns to as a pick-me-up when things get tough.

For Sarah Kieffer, a baker in Minneapolis who runs a blog called The Vanilla Bean Blog, the quotes can be so moving that she sometimes prints and tapes them to her bathroom mirror and refrigerator. A recent favorite was uttered by Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Sufi teacher: “Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.”

“I know Pinterest is seen by many as a big time-waster,” said Ms. Kieffer, 35. “But I’ve found it to be a great place to find inspiration that goes beyond pretty pictures and beautiful homes.”

One problem with Pinterest is that every fresh idea spreads so quickly that it soon becomes its own cliché (think French braids, Nutella brownies). Even within the emergent micro-genre of the Pinterest quotation, some messages have already become so overused, they produce eye rolls.

Lately, for example, there are endless variations on “YOLO” (“You Only Live Once”), said Kate Arends, 28, a graphic designer in Minneapolis who runs a blog called Wit & Delight. The Steve Jobs quotation “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” lost its power, she said, when it started to pop up on seemingly every Pinterest board.

Arguably, none of this might have happened without the popularity of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. Commissioned by the British government in 1939 to ease fears of a possible German invasion, it enjoyed an unlikely renaissance seven decades later as an objet in design blogs and Domino magazine. That poster showed that a simple, uplifting edict packaged in the form of visual art could hit the sweet spot for urban creatives who desired a little pick-me-up, but were too cool to display self-help books on their Vitsoe shelves.

These philosophical nuggets on Pinterest serve a similar function, particularly for heavy users, who include many at-home types who could use the occasional pat on the back. “Because we work day jobs and a night job — blogging — these kick-in-the-pants quotes help keep each other motivated to keep working on what we love,” said Caitlin Flemming, 27, who runs a design blog called Sacramento Street in San Francisco.

Skeptics may scoff at searching for deeper life lessons among the hair-tutorial photos. But on Pinterest, the pretty graphics can function as the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Advice that might seem hectoring coming from a loved one, like Ms. Taylor’s credo, seems more palatable when rendered as wall decoration.

“It’s one thing for a family member to tell you to get yourself together,” Ms. Martinez said. “It’s quite another when a person you follow on Pinterest presents some sound advice with a great typeface on a pretty background.”

Riff: Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’

Years ago, in my penurious and somewhat traumatic 20s, I got into the habit of collecting interior-design magazines. My parents were splitting, and my family was scattering, and one day I picked up a copy of Elle Decor at an airport and suddenly felt as though I were teleported to Narnia. I didn’t have a house or even the disposable income to purchase nonessentials that cost much more than magazines. But my family moved often when I was growing up, and my mother tried to mitigate this upheaval by reproducing our last house in each new house, while rigorously maintaining a standard of perpetual “magazine readiness.” I guess it had a lingering effect.

A few years later, I reluctantly lent my collection of magazines to a (now former) friend. He had just bought a house that he had no idea what to do with. I, on the other hand, had nothing but ideas. O.K., they weren’t strictly mine, in the sense that these ideas were acquired, arranged, styled, photographed, published and distributed by entities bearing no relation to me whatsoever. They were mine because I internalized them. I gradually convinced myself that they were me.

Of course, I didn’t realize any of this until my friend returned my magazines to me with dozens of pages torn out, having either forgotten or ignored my admittedly ridiculous request that he make photocopies instead. I felt gutted, but I was much too ashamed to admit it. How could I, without sounding crazy? It was better, ultimately, to let the friendship slide into estrangement.

The whole embarrassing situation could have been avoided if Pinterest existed then. Pinterest is a social-media Web site on which users compile collections of pictures they find on the Internet or just browse the collections of others. The site’s name combines the words “interest” and “pin,” in reference to “pin boards,” which are also known in various creative professions as inspiration boards or mood boards — basically a large board onto which appropriated images (torn from magazines!) are juxtaposed to evoke in the viewer a certain feeling, atmosphere or mood. Once the exclusive province of advertising art directors, designers and teenage girls in boarding-school dormitories, mood boards and their electronic equivalents have exploded online. Not just on Pinterest, but also in the form of dopamine-boosting street-fashion blogs and cryptically named Tumblr blogs devoted to the wordless and explanation-free juxtaposition of, say, cupcakes and teapots and shoes with shots of starched shirts and J.F.K.

This kind of visual catch-bin blog has become disconcertingly common, for reasons that a cultural theorist like Walter Benjamin would perhaps be hard pressed to explain. Who knew there was such a large, mainstream market for artfully arranged pictures of other people’s stuff? Or that “curation,” that rarefied and highly specialized skill, would all of a sudden go viral? Pinterest went online in 2010, and by the end of that year it had 10,000 unique users. By January 2012, that number had increased to 11.7 million, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10-million unique-visitor mark, according to TechCrunch. For this, it has been valued at $1.5 billion.

I’m not a big Pinterest user (more of a lurker, really), but the over-the-top monetary valuation doesn’t entirely surprise me. Long before I heard of Pinterest, I was already spending too much time on “curated” (read: reblogged) design/fashion/image/inspiration blogs. For me, it’s sites like Apartment Therapy, Ffffound, Poppytalk, Oh Joy and dozens and dozens of obscure, exquisite, utterly pointless but oddly compelling Tumblrs. (Some, like the addictive street-fashion blog The Sartorialist, are made up of original photos, but this is more the exception than the rule.)

In fact, in the past half-decade, I’ve probably spent more time fighting the urge to satiate my visual addictions — addictions formed in the process of satiating them, no doubt — than I have actually browsing through magazines. Not because I don’t like magazines. In many ways, I like them better. But they’re too grounded in space and time, too organized and linear, too collaborative and professional to deliver the synaptic frisson available from the stream-of-consciousness image blog.

I used to think this obsession was mine alone. But now nearly everyone I know — and by that I mean everyone who spends vast, barren tundras of time at her computer — goes to Web sites like these to escape, destress, perk up, calm down, feel something, not feel something, distract themselves and (they don’t call it “lifestyle pornography” for nothing) modulate pleasure and arousal. A friend of a friend calls his addiction to sites like these “avenues for procrastination,” but I think there’s something else involved. Like other forms of pastiche — the mix tape, the playlist, the mash-up — these sites force you to engage and derive meaning or at least significance or at the very least pleasure from a random grouping of pictures. Why not dive into an alternative world full of beauty and novelty and emotion and the hard-to-put-your-finger-on feeling that there’s something more, somewhere, where you’re not chained to your laptop, half dead from monotony, frustration and boredom?

Riff: Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’

Years ago, in my penurious and somewhat traumatic 20s, I got into the habit of collecting interior-design magazines. My parents were splitting, and my family was scattering, and one day I picked up a copy of Elle Decor at an airport and suddenly felt as though I were teleported to Narnia. I didn’t have a house or even the disposable income to purchase nonessentials that cost much more than magazines. But my family moved often when I was growing up, and my mother tried to mitigate this upheaval by reproducing our last house in each new house, while rigorously maintaining a standard of perpetual “magazine readiness.” I guess it had a lingering effect.

A few years later, I reluctantly lent my collection of magazines to a (now former) friend. He had just bought a house that he had no idea what to do with. I, on the other hand, had nothing but ideas. O.K., they weren’t strictly mine, in the sense that these ideas were acquired, arranged, styled, photographed, published and distributed by entities bearing no relation to me whatsoever. They were mine because I internalized them. I gradually convinced myself that they were me.

Of course, I didn’t realize any of this until my friend returned my magazines to me with dozens of pages torn out, having either forgotten or ignored my admittedly ridiculous request that he make photocopies instead. I felt gutted, but I was much too ashamed to admit it. How could I, without sounding crazy? It was better, ultimately, to let the friendship slide into estrangement.

The whole embarrassing situation could have been avoided if Pinterest existed then. Pinterest is a social-media Web site on which users compile collections of pictures they find on the Internet or just browse the collections of others. The site’s name combines the words “interest” and “pin,” in reference to “pin boards,” which are also known in various creative professions as inspiration boards or mood boards — basically a large board onto which appropriated images (torn from magazines!) are juxtaposed to evoke in the viewer a certain feeling, atmosphere or mood. Once the exclusive province of advertising art directors, designers and teenage girls in boarding-school dormitories, mood boards and their electronic equivalents have exploded online. Not just on Pinterest, but also in the form of dopamine-boosting street-fashion blogs and cryptically named Tumblr blogs devoted to the wordless and explanation-free juxtaposition of, say, cupcakes and teapots and shoes with shots of starched shirts and J.F.K.

This kind of visual catch-bin blog has become disconcertingly common, for reasons that a cultural theorist like Walter Benjamin would perhaps be hard pressed to explain. Who knew there was such a large, mainstream market for artfully arranged pictures of other people’s stuff? Or that “curation,” that rarefied and highly specialized skill, would all of a sudden go viral? Pinterest went online in 2010, and by the end of that year it had 10,000 unique users. By January 2012, that number had increased to 11.7 million, making it the fastest site in history to break through the 10-million unique-visitor mark, according to TechCrunch. For this, it has been valued at $1.5 billion.

I’m not a big Pinterest user (more of a lurker, really), but the over-the-top monetary valuation doesn’t entirely surprise me. Long before I heard of Pinterest, I was already spending too much time on “curated” (read: reblogged) design/fashion/image/inspiration blogs. For me, it’s sites like Apartment Therapy, Ffffound, Poppytalk, Oh Joy and dozens and dozens of obscure, exquisite, utterly pointless but oddly compelling Tumblrs. (Some, like the addictive street-fashion blog The Sartorialist, are made up of original photos, but this is more the exception than the rule.)

In fact, in the past half-decade, I’ve probably spent more time fighting the urge to satiate my visual addictions — addictions formed in the process of satiating them, no doubt — than I have actually browsing through magazines. Not because I don’t like magazines. In many ways, I like them better. But they’re too grounded in space and time, too organized and linear, too collaborative and professional to deliver the synaptic frisson available from the stream-of-consciousness image blog.

I used to think this obsession was mine alone. But now nearly everyone I know — and by that I mean everyone who spends vast, barren tundras of time at her computer — goes to Web sites like these to escape, destress, perk up, calm down, feel something, not feel something, distract themselves and (they don’t call it “lifestyle pornography” for nothing) modulate pleasure and arousal. A friend of a friend calls his addiction to sites like these “avenues for procrastination,” but I think there’s something else involved. Like other forms of pastiche — the mix tape, the playlist, the mash-up — these sites force you to engage and derive meaning or at least significance or at the very least pleasure from a random grouping of pictures. Why not dive into an alternative world full of beauty and novelty and emotion and the hard-to-put-your-finger-on feeling that there’s something more, somewhere, where you’re not chained to your laptop, half dead from monotony, frustration and boredom?

DealBook: Pinterest on Wish List of Rakuten, Japan's Amazon

Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesHiroshi Mikitani, the founder and chief of Rakuten, arrives for the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley.

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, the chief executive of Rakuten, would buy the rest of Pinterest — if he could.

Earlier this year, Rakuten, often dubbed the Amazon of Japan, led a $100 million investment in the social bookmarking site, at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. It was an eye-popping sum for a Web site that had no revenue and one that had also just raised money at a $200 million valuation just months before.

Mr. Mikitani says the price he paid was more than fair — and he wouldn’t mind buying more, assuming it came up for sale.

“I would love to buy,” he said during an interview with the New York Times at the Allen and Company conference on Thursday. “But I don’t think they would like to sell.”

So he’ll take what he can get. “We’re going to have a very good global strategic relationship with them, so that’s fine,” said Mr. Mikitani.

Some experts have questioned the merits of the Pinterest investment, which came on the eve of Facebook’s botched initial public offering. Indeed, the value of many Web companies have drifted lower in recent months. But Mr. Mikitani, who manages a personal Pinterest board, said he has real conviction in the fast-growing Internet start-up.

“There were very reasonable,” Mr. Mikitani said of Pinterest’s management team. “They were not greedy, they were not trying to inflate the valuation.”

Before making the investment, Mr. Mikitani said he considered Pinterest’s meteoric traffic, the quality of its membership base, the so-called “stickiness” of the site (the engagement of its users) and how the site helps retailers. As the head of such a big e-commerce platform, Mr. Mikitani said he was particularly impressed with Pinterest’s conversion rate, the number of users who made retail purchases after clicking on Pinterest links.

In recent years, Mr. Mikitani has been on an international buying binge.

His acquisitions include Linkshare and Buy.com in the United States and PriceMinister, the French e-commerce business. Last year, he added book e-reader Kobo to his bursting portfolio.

Mr. Mikitani is not done yet. He said he has benefited from the relatively strong yen, which has made international deals more palatable. However, he provided little detail on his wish list.

“If there’s a good opportunity, we will consider it,” he said. “Sometimes, great deals just pop up.”

DealBook: Pinterest on Wish List of Rakuten, Japan's Amazon

Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesHiroshi Mikitani, the founder and chief of Rakuten, arrives for the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley.

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, the chief executive of Rakuten, would buy the rest of Pinterest — if he could.

Earlier this year, Rakuten, often dubbed the Amazon of Japan, led a $100 million investment in the social bookmarking site, at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. It was an eye-popping sum for a Web site that had no revenue and one that had also just raised money at a $200 million valuation just months before.

Mr. Mikitani says the price he paid was more than fair — and he wouldn’t mind buying more, assuming it came up for sale.

“I would love to buy,” he said during an interview with the New York Times at the Allen and Company conference on Thursday. “But I don’t think they would like to sell.”

So he’ll take what he can get. “We’re going to have a very good global strategic relationship with them, so that’s fine,” said Mr. Mikitani.

Some experts have questioned the merits of the Pinterest investment, which came on the eve of Facebook’s botched initial public offering. Indeed, the value of many Web companies have drifted lower in recent months. But Mr. Mikitani, who manages a personal Pinterest board, said he has real conviction in the fast-growing Internet start-up.

“There were very reasonable,” Mr. Mikitani said of Pinterest’s management team. “They were not greedy, they were not trying to inflate the valuation.”

Before making the investment, Mr. Mikitani said he considered Pinterest’s meteoric traffic, the quality of its membership base, the so-called “stickiness” of the site (the engagement of its users) and how the site helps retailers. As the head of such a big e-commerce platform, Mr. Mikitani said he was particularly impressed with Pinterest’s conversion rate, the number of users who made retail purchases after clicking on Pinterest links.

In recent years, Mr. Mikitani has been on an international buying binge.

His acquisitions include Linkshare and Buy.com in the United States and PriceMinister, the French e-commerce business. Last year, he added book e-reader Kobo to his bursting portfolio.

Mr. Mikitani is not done yet. He said he has benefited from the relatively strong yen, which has made international deals more palatable. However, he provided little detail on his wish list.

“If there’s a good opportunity, we will consider it,” he said. “Sometimes, great deals just pop up.”