Pinterest's Clear Friendship Emails

I am sure other companies do this as well... but since the email arrived from Pinterest and caught my attention, I will credit Pinterest here and realize other examples will be forwarded my way! Many socially-enabled sites (ie Facebook Connect, Twitter Oauth) send notifications when friends join the service. Sometimes those friends are not connected with you on the new service - but the notification is done to spark the connection. And in other cases, the connection is automatically forged (ie Quora - which was helpful with early virality). Depending on the relationship, language, etc - both can be confusing to new users. I give Pinterest credit with the below example because it very clearly defines a relationship: a "Facebook Friend" has joined Pinterest. That may seem like a minor point - but it is much clearer than directly creating an on-Pinterest friendship and/or only using his name.

I get daily emails from services alerting me of new friends, followers, etc. This is a very minor way to add context and clarity.

Facebook's Recently Used Apps Module & The Larger Relationship with App Ecosystem

Last week I wrote about Facebook's newsfeed clustering of posts published by the same applications. While it is interesting as a signal of the newsfeed's evolution - it is represents the larger theme of Facebook relationship, promotion, and integration of applications (and the larger application ecosystem). Obviously Facebook has always been supportive of the ecosystem - from Zynga & LOLapps (gaming) to Spotify & Pinterest (content) to Wantful & ShoeDazzle (off-Facebook commerce), etc. In fact, yesterday's news was that "visitors from Facebook accounted for 1.1 billion visits to iOS and HTML5 apps, meaning an average of more than 6 visits per user."

The emergence of Facebook's Timeline, Open Graph and the proliferation of applications atop the platform (mobile, newsfeed, ticker, etc) - Facebook relationship with applications is evolving:

- How do they cluster by type and by shared users? (example here)

- How do they cluster by recency (example below with "Recent Used Apps")

- How do they cluster by popularity (example of trending here)

- How do they prevent the Ticker and newsfeed from being overwhelmed by content? (more here)

- What role does Timeline and off-Facebook play here?

- And ultimately, what does this mean for Facebook's off-Facebook.com strategy: promotion, monetization, mobile, etc?

Jetsetter + Pinterest: "Pin It to Win It" Contest Drives Travel Curation

With the rise of Pinterest, I have enjoyed tracking the brands and campaigns racing to leverage the platform and be early movers. For instance, a couple weeks ago, I highlighted Harrod's Pinterest / curator contest. Here is relatively similar program from Jetsetter. Like Harrods, Jetsetter is using Pinterest to drive curation:

"Our fans ask us all the time how they can become Jetsetter curators. Now's your chance to show us you have what it takes. Using Pinterest, create the ultimate destination pinboard..."

It is effectively a way to:

1. drive best-of-lists (ala early Yelp and eBay efforts) 2. understand data and users preference 3. and drive viral traffic by rewarding social sharing on Pinterest ("Pin it to win it in our Pinterest Giveaway")

It's simple, clever and amazingly low-cost. Furthermore, it seeds usage and drives followers on a growing platform where most brands are still slow to adopt.

Harrods Takes to Facebook to Promote their Pinterest Contest

This is relevant to two posts: - Yesterday's on the value of being a first mover, specifically on Pinterest; and - Porsche moving users between their Facebook and Pinterest pages

Well here's another good examples: Harrods is allowing fans to help design their retail windows using Pinterest mood boards.

Clever: It's on brand. It's effectively free marketing. It drives Pinterest activity far beyond the winner. And it blends users across Pinterest and Facebook - both from the cross-promotion and Pinterest's opengraph integration.

Amazon Begins Including Pinterest Buttons on Product Pages

First movers get rewarded... just ask Spotify on Facebook or Loopt on iOS. This of course assumes that you are a first mover on a big, impactful platform. There is little question Pinterest is both big and impactful. So Amazon is experimenting with it.

Here is a screenshot of the Pinterest button on an Amazon product page - beside email, Facebook and Twitter buttons. For e-commerce companies - Pinterest is arguably more relevant here than either Facebook or Twitter. It is probably most valuable to get a Facebook share - but users are probably far more inclined to post to Pinterest... and for many of those users, Pinterest will then post back to Facebook.

Fascinating to watch.

Porsche + Facebook + Pinterest

So much is great about this: Porsche takes to Facebook to alert fans that the Macan is on Pinterest.... that drives 2,500 likes and 200 shares within 6 hours. That alone is interesting and somewhat ironic. Then go to Pinterest. Despite 10,000s of impressions of their Pinterest post on Facebook (are you following?) there are only 700 followers on Pinterest, 2 pins, and 150 Facebook Likes.

So many potential comments including: - kudos to Porsche for adopting Pinterest - the concept of driving traffic circularly across networks is far from simple - I'm not entirely sure Porsche's Facebook fans understand what Pinterest is - Which might be because Porsche's fans are male (?) or because they Like things without context (?), etc