Pinterest has unveiled a new chat extension to make it easier for users to share Pins with Friends. The company has joined Facebook’s community of around 200,000 bots because users share nearly one million Pins with through Facebook Messenger.
Facebook’s goal for its community of bots is to create unique social experiences. Pinterest plans to contribute to this community by adding much of the same functionally available on Pinterest’s site and the company’s own app. Pinterest chatbot users in Facebook Messenger will be able to start a conversation with Pinterest’s bot, either by typing out a search query or by choosing from pre-selected categories like “trending” and “food.” If a user chooses the first option, they will be presented with relevant image. If they opt for the second choice, a user will then be presented with Pins related to that category.
Pinterest hopes that providing Facebook users with access to more Pinterest features and access to its dataset of over 100 billion pins will result in more Pinterest users. To use the Pinterest bot on Facebook, users do not need a Pinterest account. Users with accounts on both social platforms will receive additional features. These users will be able to see Promoted Pins and Related Pins in search results from Pinterest’s Chat Extension. However, Promoted Pins and Related Pins will only show up if a person is logged in to Pinterest and Messenger on the same device.
Regardless of whether a Facebook user using Pinterest’s chatbot has a Pinterest account, creates one, or is logged in to one they already have, Pinterest will be collecting user information, such as name, gender, and country. It is theorized that Pinterest will use that data to improve its search results and pin recommendations.
Adapting its interface to Facebook Messenger is a wise move for Pinterest. We’ve already seen how keen Facebook is on stealing Snapchat’s ideas and functionality for new Instagram features, so it was only a matter of time before Facebook encroached on Pinterest’s territory. By using Facebook’s Chat Extension ability to its advantage, Pinterest is forming a mutually beneficial partnership with Facebook, which users had already unofficially created.
