When we think of article sharing on social media platforms, our thoughts first turn to Twitter, through which The Practice team most consume news stories and links. In fact, we’re more likely to use Twitter as a source of current events than any other site, social media or otherwise. But might this all change with Pinterest’s venture into news sharing?

Pinterest has always been rich in content from blogs, but it’s always been more of a “scannable” platform for inspiring pictures rather than follow-through links, thanks to its image-centric layout. However, back in September, the site announced an expansion to its set of “rich pins”- those affiliated with brands, to enable greater information. These include content such as reviews, recipes, price information, and other media without the need to link through to the original source. Now, “rich pins” will go one step further, including even more details about pinned articles so that when users pin a story or article to their boards, each pin will also reveal information such as a greater description, author’s name, as well as a larger link. This change, Pinterest hopes, will make it easier and more natural for users to share content they find helpful, interesting, and informative. Jon Parise, Pinterest software engineer, wrote on the site’s blog after the announcement that this would make pins “more useful” so that when users discover a pin, “it’s easy to act on it, whether that’s cooking a dish, watching a movie, buying a new gadget or reading an article,” he added.

In the past few months following these changes, it’s been revealed that Pinterest has accounted for 20% of all “media/publishing”- related content shared on social networks. (To put this in perspective, Facebook accounted for 40% while Twitter had a rate of 30%) Third-place is certainly impressive for a site which many only think of as relevant for image-based content. We feel that because Pinterest’s strong point is already focused on link and content sharing, enabling easy news sharing seems like a natural step forward for the company. And with an already impressive 5 million articles pinned to the site each day, it’s clear that there is scope for Pinterest to expand, particularly as this new feature will also be perfect for allowing users to pin articles to look over both immediately, and at a later date. And aside from making it easier for users to share articles, the updates will also hopefully make brands and media outlets more inclined to use the site too to relay their own information. It’s early days yet so we’ll be keeping an eye out for how, if, and when, Pinterest’s purpose evolves.

Are you a fan of Pinterest, and do you like the way the site has evolved over the past few years? Can you see yourself using it to share news content as well as current media? We’d love to hear your thoughts as always, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page too. You can also find us on Pinterest here.