Pinterest, since birth, has garnered fame as a discover tool, for ideas and projects, and to basically glean information about anything and everything from the top of your head. Now, thanks to a partnership struck between Apple and Pinterest, the famous platform now allows its iOS users to download apps too.
Straight from the horses’ mouth- this is the statement in the Pinterest blog that describes what exactly you can do with this feature, called the Apple Pins-
Let’s say you’re Pinning workout inspiration to your Marathon Training board. If you see a fitness app that helps you reach your goals, you can download it right from Pinterest.
When you come across an app Pin, you can tap ‘Install’ to download the app right to your iPhone or iPad without having to exit Pinterest. Of course, it goes without saying- only iPhone/iPad users viewing Pinterest on their devices can view this feature.
The thing is, Apple currently houses more than 1.4 million apps in its App store, and it is enough to boggle the mind. Bring in a visual expert that helps you find exactly what you are looking for, twine them together, and the results are seamlessly perfect.
Pinterest CEO Evan Sharp says-
We can be a really powerful service for app discovery, which is a problem that still really hasn’t been solved.
Apple has launched its own App Store board, which currently features a set of fashion and shopping apps.
Facebook, though, does help in app discovery in their News Feed, while Twitter gave small developers the ability to promote their apps on the service. What makes Pinterest inherently special? It is the very way how it works- discoveries to find new things to do, see and buy, which is usually the key in how people go looking for apps, as opposed to Facebook or Twitter, whose primary concern is social connectivity, and news. Another important thing to factor into the equation is that Apple sees 75 percent of activity on its service (70 million monthly users) coming from mobile devices.
The game changer here is the focus Pinterest is giving to monetary returns- this happens to be a move(no plans to make money directly from App Pins, as of now) in a long list of moves that the company made with revenue in mind-travel & cooking features, along with the advertiser pins that opened to the general world last December following a beta testing.
Selling spaces to app developers will definitely bring in favourable returns. SV Angel had led a Pinterest financing last year at $5 billion valuation., with Pinterest managing to raise $200 million worth Series F round.
