With all the social networking and such online it was only a matter of time until shopping got more into the act, too. Zappos has announced a new page called PinPointing that recommends products based on Pinterest posts.
As Bloomberg reports, San Francisco-based Zappos Labs created PinPointing, which loads Zappos products — shoes, clothes, etc. — onto a page based on a Pinterest user’s preferences.
While this isn’t an official merging of forces — Zappos already allows users to upload their picks to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest — Zappos Labs director Will Young told Bloomberg that Zappos users were 13 times more likely to share a purchase on Pinterest than on Twitter, and eight times more likely to share than on Facebook. Sales via Twitter still kicked the other two sites’ butts: the average Twitter order is $33.66, Facebook $2.08 and Pinterest just 75 cents.
Young said the idea behind PinPointing is that “social shopping is a total buzzword that people throw around, but I don’t think any big brands have cracked it…When we talk to people and ask what they think is the best social-shopping experience, they say Pinterest, and it’s not even a retailer.”
Bloomberg also suggested the move comes, in part, so Zappos can “debunk its reputation as solely a seller of shoes.” And, as its parent company Amazon has really amped up its fashion offerings, it makes sense that Zappos is looking for different ways to highlight its various products. Pinterest “has seen a surge in user growth,” reporting 11.7 million visitors as of January 2012. The social-networking site has also raised $100 million in financing, valuing the company at $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg.
