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User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

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Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#21

Post by AceyMan »

TheHideout wrote: post #18

For me, Pinterest works exactly how I want it to - as a store for inspiration images. I use it heavily for storing concept art to later draw inspiration from when doing game design, digital art, or screen-printing designs. Granted, I don't find the search helpful at all and the embedded pins are terribly irreverent and annoying. If you are a Pinterest user and are interested in a large collection of fantasy/cyberpunk…

Be careful here — I maintained several active boards with quite a few followers, but was flagged for "inappropriate images" which Pinterest mods themselves deleted.

In the main, I'd only ever pinned images I found on the site itself, so I thought "why pick on me, I'm not the one who originally pinned it?"

But I didn't go though my stuff and look for any other TOS violating images (I really didn't think I had any) and then I was perm-banned. You have no recourse once that happens.

Caveat emptor — its puritanical standards are likely to bite anyone who plays outside the recipes and sewing categories into anything interesting in the art and photography domains.

Screw you, Pinterest.

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#22

Post by maire »

Pinterest has an issue with their support. I was using it for a while to gather inspiration on a particular subject. It just started crashing with a server side error message. I submitted a bug report and the response was lame. I kept saying look at your own server side error message. You must have logs to look at. I don't think a human saw my bug responses. Now I don't use it at all.

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#23

Post by astura »

nuclx wrote: post #2

The fact that registration is required for no obvious reason kinda makes the site a no-go zone for me. I only occasionally land there via Google Image search. Maybe I'm just not the right target audience, since I'm not a social media guy. For my specialized interests there are better aggregators such as specific subreddits / HN. Forcing registration is part of the user retention strategy, but for me it makes using th…

I swear, like 50% of Google Image results come from Pintrest. They are all mostly stolen/reposts too. It's incredibly annoying.

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#24

Post by astura »

maire wrote: post #22

Pinterest has an issue with their support. I was using it for a while to gather inspiration on a particular subject. It just started crashing with a server side error message. I submitted a bug report and the response was lame. I kept saying look at your own server side error message. You must have logs to look at. I don't think a human saw my bug responses. Now I don't use it at all.

In fairness, this is the support you get from pretty much all websites. I stopped submitting bug reports entirely, it only leads to frustration.

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#25

Post by vanderZwan »

astura wrote: post #23
nuclx wrote: post #2

The fact that registration is required for no obvious reason kinda makes the site a no-go zone for me. I only occasionally land there via Google Image search. Maybe I'm just not the right target audience, since I'm not a social media guy. For my specialized interests there are better aggregators such as specific subreddits / HN. Forcing registration is part of the user retention strategy, but for me it makes using th…

I swear, like 50% of Google Image results come from Pintrest. They are all mostly stolen/reposts too. It's incredibly annoying.

> They are all mostly stolen/reposts too.

That is perhaps the most frustrating part of it. Often I'm looking for the original source of something and then Pinterest comes inbetween like some viral search spam.

(Kind of makes me wonder if the early days of printing press with no copyright were comparable)

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#26

Post by m0rose »

Jaruzel wrote: post #9

> When I joined the growth team at Pinterest There it is, right there. 'Growth team' - a team dedicated to using every dirty trick in the book to retain users. Facebook has one too, and that team was responsible for all the shady cross-app data sharing on peoples phones. Instead of treating your users as 'assets' simply to be owned and controlled, why not actually ask them about their experience of using your service…

I like Pinterest. I'm bad at decorating, and I'm a bad cook, so having recipes and decorating stuff that I can sift through and save into distinct idea books is nice. However, the website/app is basically glorified bookmarks. Trying to turn this into a Social Networking Empire is just pure greed, and I agree with you: the "Growth Team" concept is wretched. Sure, it's an interesting problem from a CompSci perspective, but the underlying motivations make me ill. Stop trying to manipulate your users. If they like and have a use for it, they'll use it. If they no longer have a use for it, they'll stop. BUT, if it's good enough, then the incoming users should eclipse the outgoing, and you'll float on just fine. Alas, for Social Network Empire wannabes, that's just not good enough!

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#27

Post by Jaruzel »

m0rose wrote: post #26
Jaruzel wrote: post #9

> When I joined the growth team at Pinterest There it is, right there. 'Growth team' - a team dedicated to using every dirty trick in the book to retain users. Facebook has one too, and that team was responsible for all the shady cross-app data sharing on peoples phones. Instead of treating your users as 'assets' simply to be owned and controlled, why not actually ask them about their experience of using your service…

I like Pinterest. I'm bad at decorating, and I'm a bad cook, so having recipes and decorating stuff that I can sift through and save into distinct idea books is nice. However, the website/app is basically glorified bookmarks. Trying to turn this into a Social Networking Empire is just pure greed, and I agree with you: the "Growth Team" concept is wretched. Sure, it's an interesting problem from a CompSci perspective,…

Is there not a self-hosted open-source solution you could use?

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#28

Post by curiousgal »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #12
Shivetya wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the site disgusts me because it pollutes google image searches so thoroughly and combined with the mentioned required registration just makes it poison overall. when I have to filter a site to get results I can use there is a problem and there needs to be an easy method to permanent filter such sites.

I wish I could filter Pinterest and more importantly Quora from all search results forever. I consider those sites deceptive and malicious spam. Google released a Chrome addon that filters sites, but this doesn't help users of other browsers and it hadn't been updated in over three years.

For now I just manually add "-pinterest" to my query when I am looking for images.

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#29

Post by culot »

mikestew wrote: post #15
ClassyJacket wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could filter Pinterest and more importantly Quora from all search results forever. I consider those sites deceptive and malicious spam. Google released a Chrome addon that filters sites, but this doesn't help users of other browsers and it hadn't been updated in over three years.

Google briefly had a feature (back in the ExpertSexChange days) where you could ban a domain from your search results. I miss that feature. Now Pinterest gets blocked at DNS via pi-hole. At least it is something.

This works well for filtering search results:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-d...

Re: User retention at Pinterest: tackling an ambiguous problem

#30

Post by sml156 »

mikestew wrote: post #15
ClassyJacket wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could filter Pinterest and more importantly Quora from all search results forever. I consider those sites deceptive and malicious spam. Google released a Chrome addon that filters sites, but this doesn't help users of other browsers and it hadn't been updated in over three years.

Google briefly had a feature (back in the ExpertSexChange days) where you could ban a domain from your search results. I miss that feature. Now Pinterest gets blocked at DNS via pi-hole. At least it is something.

I am using Firefox and use "SearchMage - Search Enhancer" add-on for that

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchmage-se...

I found it here a few months ago actually and am quite happy with it, It has a few features that include infinite scroll that you can turn off or on.

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