Pinterest wants to make it easier for you to find the best apps out of a sea of 1.2 million options in the Apple App Store. To do that, the digital scrapbooking social network is teaming up with Apple on a new product called App Pins.
The tool, which Pinterest announced Wednesday in a blog post, will allow the company’s users to pin apps to their Pinterest boards just like they would an apple cobbler recipe or one of those mason jar planter thingies. As part of the partnership, Apple will also be creating a few Pin boards of its own, where it will highlight top apps. Users who want to download a certain app can do so right from Pinterest on their phones.
This deal is, in many ways, part of Pinterest’s much larger ambition to become an alternative search engine. Last year, the company debuted its so-called guided search, which helps users narrow their searches by suggesting subcategories within a search that might lead to more specific search results. So, a search for “cake” might yield suggestions like “pops” or “decorating.” It’s search for people who don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, but want to do some browsing to find the answer. It’s window-shopping search. And it’s this promise of discovery—curated by a body of users with, let’s be real, frustratingly good taste—that makes Pinterest an appealing place to uncover new apps.
It’s also become an appealing place for advertisers. This year, Pinterest began allowing U.S.-based advertisers to buy Promoted Pins, after a promising pilot program with select advertisers. During that beta test, Promoted Pins got a 30-percent boost in exposure, thanks to Pinterest users re-posting the pins on their own boards. Though Pinterest told The New York Times it’s not planning on making money from App Pins, that doesn’t mean developers couldn’t begin shifting their advertising dollars to Pinterest.
With or without advertising, though, App Pins should be a welcome feature for app developers. Until now, getting exposure for their apps required either being selected and featured by Apple staffers or paying to promote the app on other platforms, like Facebook. With App Pins, developers will now have access to an army of potential promoters.
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