Since its beginning in 2010, Pinterest has quickly become one of the most popular Social Networking sites on the Internet.  With such a fast growth and surging popularity, Pinterest had to move quickly to fix bugs and ramp up its infrastructure to accommodate the growing number of pinners.

The changes won’t be flashy and some you probably won’t even notice.   One major change is a redesign that’s quietly being rolled out to users.  Trying to avoid backlash from a redesign that Facebook has faced many times Pinterest made some important but minimal cosmetic changes.

Some of the design changes include:

1. Larger Images – When you click an image, it is now larger with a focus on image details.  The new width increased from 600 pixels to 735 pixels.
2. Buttons – A new red “Pin it” button now appears when you hover over a pin.  Also, a new “website and related pins” button gives you the option to go directly to the website when you click and enlarge a pin.
3. Settings – The new account settings allow you to control when and why you receive emails from Pinterest.

Some features that have been removed are:

1. No more hash tags – adding a # in front of a term will no longer make it searchable.
2. No links – the only links allowed are those in your profile linking to your website and social profiles.
3. Embed links – If you direct link to a pin, your images are now broken.  You must use the embed link feature from Pinterest to directly link to pins on Pinterest.
4. Tweets – You no longer have the ability to tweet a pin when you pin it.
5. Profile description – Profile descriptions are now limited to 160 characters (instead of 200 in the old design)

For a business, using Pinterest to expand your brand just got better.  If you create your account through http://business.pinterest.com, you’ll have the option to “verify your business.”  The business Pinterest is still using the old look and feel but a business account will get you web analytics.

The information that can now be tracked includes:

1. How many pins generated from your site
2. Repins, impressions, reach and clicks for pins
3. Most recent repined and clicked pins from your site
4. Number of pins from your site over time and unique pinners
5. Number of repins from your site over  time and unique pinners
6. Number of impressions of those pins over time and related reach
7. Number of clicks of those pins over time and related reach
8. Pins from your domain are filtered by most recent, repinned and most clicked pins.

Pinterest is making some exciting changes.  Are you ready?

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