“Whoa what just happened?!”
This was the thought that suddenly came to mind as all of a sudden over 100 emails from Pinterest came flooding into my email inbox this morning. Hey, I knew I was popular on Pinterest, but I didn’t think I was THAT popular… As I scanned quickly through the emails I noticed why I had suddenly received them all.
Someone had added me to a group board in Pinterest. Without asking me if I was even remotely interested in being a part of the group.
The nerve!
If you see more than a handful of contributors on a group board, chances are none of them asked to be there
Now, I totally understand about inclusion and spreading the word. I know that all, it’s part of my day job and it’s part of what I do for a living. And as much as I completely 100% adore Pinterest (yes, I may be the subject of an on-air Pintervention one day) I think there are big errors with the whole Pinterest group thing. In essence, they are great. I run a couple of group boards and I moderate the boards and the pins daily. Here’s where the problem lies: When you create a group board in Pinterest, anyone who is a part of the group can add or DELETE any of the other group members without you knowing it. I feel that the people who are contributing to a group board on Pinterest should be there because they WANT to be there, and that they should work together to make their group board rock.
Also, there’s just something so very wrong with adding people to a group without them giving permission to. It’s presumptuous, just plain rude, and not really very inviting at all. “Hey, you’ve just been added to the Group Board ‘Foods that begin with the letter F!’” Really? F off…
The reason why I’m writing this is because it’s not the first time it’s happened to me. It happens almost weekly but after the deluge of email notifications today, my brain exploded. I had absolutely NO interest whatsoever in the board I was added to today. None, nada, zip. I’m also wondering if the other 562 people that were added at the same had any actual interest either. Did you know that even if you remove yourself from the group, you are automatically following it because somebody added you, so if you don’t want to view the pins, you’ve got to take the step to unfollow the board? I didn’t know that either, but I do now.
Pinterest Fail.
You have NO idea how it kills me to say those two words together.
About Chief Chaos
We hope this helps! http://blog.pinterest.com/post/21816641071/introducing-improved-group-boards.
Thanks so much for the feedback.
Hi Ben,
.
You have no idea how much I truly appreciate the fact that Pinterest is listening to their users and is being pro-active about feedback – I love ya even more now
Reading the changes now that you’ve implemented for how groups work, I think they’re going to work really well for & groups will be able to be a great tool for users to use effectively.
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment on this, Ben!
First off eileen, great post. I was added to a group as well and well really didn’t want to be there. Ben I think it’s great that you are hearing what people are saying but I have one question- when are private boards coming back? I want to be able to pin things to create marketing plans and ideas for my business but feel like that is limited because everything is out in the open.