Blogging Pins (with Credit)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Blogging Pins (with Credit)

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. Here’s an example:

via Kadie Corless on Pinterest

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.