Pinterest opens the flood gates
Although the former Terms of Service on Pinterest forbid using the site for business purposes, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) saw the value in the visual bookmarking site and jumped aboard anyway. This rule is common in new social media startups, as Google+ just rolled out business accounts long after personal accounts had been around as well.
Rather than punish the business community for using their service, Pinterest has set up new sets of terms, and as they promised, all terms are in plain English, one set for personal users, and another set of rules for businesses.
“The business terms help guide businesses on how to use Pinterest,” said Pinterest Product Manager, Cat Lee. “They also enable us to separate the provisions meant for businesses from those meant for regular people. As a result, we updated our user terms to be half as long. We also took the opportunity to simplify the language as much as possible. Unfortunately, terms of use are one of those documents that requires a certain amount of legalese, so we’ve offered ‘translations’ of these sections, too.”
If your business is new to Pinterest, you can sign up for a business account, and existing users can convert their personal account to a business account.
Adding new tools for business users
Now that businesses can officially use Pinterest openly and proudly, the visual bookmarking site now offers new tools that legitimize business use. First, users can verify their website which puts a special marker on your profile to increase trust by consumers so they know it’s really your business, and the site now offers new buttons and widgets for business users. They also offer Profile widgets, or Board widgets for specific boards, which is particularly useful for business users.
“We look forward to seeing businesses continue inspiring their audience with amazing content,” Lee said. Now that the floodgates are open, business users should sign up or convert their sites to get to pinning!
