Pinterest, the pinboard-style image-sharing and bookmarking website, has added a new feature that will allow users to ‘pin’ to a map and pull in additional location information for their pins.
According to product designer Justin Edmund on the Pinterest blog, about 1.5m places are pinned to Pinterest boards each day and there are, to date, more than 750m pins of destinations on the network.
To give these pins a real sense of where they come from, users can now add a map to their boards and pin them to specific locations. These boards will display a map on the right of the screen, with numbered markers linking to the stream of pins on the left.
Locations for Place Pins are provided by Foursquare and clicking on the markers offers more information, such as an address or phone number, plus a ‘Learn More’ button linking to external sites with more information. Some markers will even come with a ‘Get Directions’ button, offering directions powered by Google Maps.
As with all Pinterest boards, users can invite others to collaborate on their map and share their maps with friends. The new feature can also be used via Pinterest’s mobile apps.
To kick off this new feature, Pinterest has invited some big names in travel to create their own boards as inspiration for others. Condé Nast Traveler has created a board of the Top 100 hotels in the world, VisitBritain has made one of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Airbnb has boards dedicated to Paris and Tokyo, and TripAdvisor has made a collection of hard-earned travel photos.
Pinterest has already forged partnerships with some businesses to automatically include location information with pins from their sites, including Foursquare, Airbnb, Booking.com and UrbanSpoon.
