Oh, How Pinteresting!

We’ve just added a new feature to Pinterest: pinboard categories. Lots of people said they didn’t want to tag every pin on a board with a general topic such as food, art, or books. That’s where categories come in.To help categorize all the pinboards, we’re letting anyone suggest a category for any pinboard. If you suggest a category, the pinboard owner will receive an email asking if they’d like to keep the category or change it. As categories spread, it will become easier and easier to discover new pins you’re interested in.Even though pinboard categories aren’t the flashiest feature, it’s something I’m really excited about. To start adding categories, visit your profile page and click the edit button next to any of your pinboards.

—Stephanie Lim, Community Specialist, Currently obsessed with pinning to Fashiony.

Today we released a new version of the pin and repin forms.

The first thing you’ll notice is that we’ve combined the title and caption fields into a single “description”. Lots of users told us that they didn’t need both of them. We thought a single field would make pinning a little bit faster. If you had titles before they won’t be lost! We’ll be combining your title and captions into a single description automatically over the next few days.

The second change is an improved tagging interface. You can now add multiple tags quickly by typing a tag and pushing enter or comma. This form will also let us support autocomplete in the future, an improvement that has been requested by quite a few of you!

We hope you like the improvements. Let us know if you have any other ideas for making the pinning process easier.

—Stephanie Lim, Community Specialist, Currently obsessed with pinning to Apartment Therapy.

A big problem on blogs is tracking down the original source of an image. Most blogging products weren’t designed with proper attribution in mind. Failing to give credit to original sources isn’t fair to the original artist or business that provided an image, nor is it good for readers who want to get more information.

On Pinterest, we try to make it easy to credit your sources. When you pin an image, we automatically grab and display the source link right on your pin. But what happens when you want to add a pin to your blog?

Yesterday we added a feature that makes it easy to blog about a pin while giving full credit to the original source and the person who pinned it. Push the green ’embed’ button to the left of a pin to get a snippet of code you can paste right into your blog. When you click the image you can visit the source (hover over the image to preview the source). The footnote gives kudos to the person who pinned the image.

We played with lots of different variations on how to give credit and we’re very open to suggestions to improve it! Even if you’re not using Pinterest, do everyone a favor and credit your sources :)

*Thanks to Laura Miner of Pictory for doing a nice write up of this problem on her blog.

—Stephanie Lim, Community Specialist, Currently obsessed with pinning to Sweets.

Today we’re introducing a new feature: group pinboards. With group pinboards, lots of people can add pins to a common pinboard. Group pinboards are a really fun way for:

• Couples to share ideas for their upcoming wedding
• Housemates to share redecorating ideas
• Families to share recipes
• Friends to share shopping or gift ideas

For example, my Mom, my sister and I have a pinboard full of gift ideas for my niece and nephew. Whenever one of us adds a pin, the other contributors get a notification by email.

To create a group pinboard, push the edit button on any of your boards and go to the Add Contributor section. You can invite anyone who is already a member of Pinterest, or you can send invite a friend who hasn’t joined Pinterest yet. Group pinboards are still in beta, but we’re excited to hear what you think.

We think @replies in twitter are a great way to send a short messages to your friends.  We recently added a similar feature in Pinterest.  Just type @username in any comment field.  We will send a message directly to another Pinterest user via email.  It’s a great way to suggest a pin or get someone involved in a conversation you’re having.  @replies are still a work in progress, but give it a try and let us know what you think!

We’ve had a lot of questions from our early pinners about how to delete a pin.  Maybe you pinned it to the wrong pinboard.  Maybe you pinned it twice.  Maybe you’re just tired of looking at it.  Either way, you want it gone.

Here’s a quick walk-through of how to delete a pin:

1.  Go to the closeup view of the pin you want to delete.  (That’s the view with the big image of the single pin.)

2.  Click the “Edit” button in the upper-right corner above the image.

3.  Click the “Delete” button in the bottom-right corner.

And, presto, the pin is gone — and off to that big pinboard in the sky!

We’ll be compiling this and some other tip & tricks into a Help Section soon.

But if you have ideas about how to make the delete-a-pin process more intuitive, please let us know in the comments below.  We love feedback.

Just like Twitter, you can “follow” on Pinterest.  Following lets you see the pins that you care about the most.  There are two ways to follow on Pinterest

Follow a User: When you visit someone’s Pinterest profile, you’ll see a button that says “Follow All”.  Once you push it, you’ll be following all the pinboards that person has created, and you’ll automatically follow any pinboard she creates in the future. I use “Follow All” for people whose taste I really admire, like my friend Sha and my sister Elizabeth.

Follow a Pinboard: Sometimes, you just want to follow a specific pinboard.  For instance, I LOVE Joy’s For the Home pinboard, but I’m steering clear of her Tasty Treats pinboard because it makes me too hungry.  In this case, I can just follow her individual pinboard.

As the Pinterest community grows, try following boards and people that really speak to your interests - whether that’s art, architecture, food, interior design, photography, or traveling!  It will make Pinterest more personal and fun.

As always, let us know what you think. Get in touch via our Support page anytime.

We launched a beta feature called “email-a-pin”.  Send an email with an image attachment to pin [at] pinterest [dot] com. Your image will be posted as a new pin to a pinboard called “Pins on the Go.”

• The email subject line will be the pin title
• The body of your message will be the pin description
• You can remove your email signature by adding #end.  Anything below ‘#end’ won’t be posted.

We thought emailing a pin could be great when you’re out and about.  Just snap a photo with your phone and pin it! See a window display you like? Drinking an especially beautiful latte? Spot a pair of pinworthy shoes? Just email us.