Pinterest is finally transforming into an e-commerce platform

Pinterest has all the makings of an excellent e-commerce platform, just without the e-commerce. The service is already a popular place for retailers to show off their products, and users can “Pin” images that they like to collections in much the same way one would save an Amazon listing to their wishlist, but purchasing said products requires that users visit the retailer’s website directly. That’s about to change, however, as Pinterest is finally implementing something that we’ve all been expecting for some time: a “Buy” button. 

Observers—ReadWrite included—have long expected Pinterest to get into the e-commerce business directly, instead of just driving traffic to retailers’ websites. At an event at Pinterest headquarters in San Francisco, CEO Ben Silbermann revealed that blue “Buy It” buttons would soon appear on the site, next to the site’s familiar red “Pin It” buttons. This wasn’t a surprise to me—because minutes before his announcement, I happened to read a copy of a speaker’s script left lying on the floor before an event staffer whisked it away. Pinterest’s new product is called Buyable Pins, which builds on Pinterest’s existing Rich Pin features. Rich Pins allow websites to populate Web pages with details that Pinterest’s crawlers can easily read. When an item is marked up correctly with Rich Pin data, Pinterest will add information like price and discounts to a page that a Pinterest user creates when he or she pins it to a board. The product will launch initially on Apple’s iOS devices in June, with other platforms supported “in the coming months,” said Silbermann. Shopify appears to be a partner. That e-commerce site builder has already purchased Google ads against the term “Buyable Pins” which takes people to a page explaining how to sell items on Pinterest.