Pinterest is hotter than the sun right now and I've refused to write about it up to this point as I'm no bandwagon jumper. But then we started talking measurement and influence and here I am.
I don't deny it has value for certain brands and infographic enthusiasts must feel like everyday is Christmas since being invited to join. As I said for certain brands it's brilliant - I'm even using it in a campaign for a relevant client at the moment - but when I heard a supposed social media expert telling a financial advisor they need to get on Pinterest I felt despair. Don't bother, Mr. Financial Advisor; you may find people planning how to spend their money - weddings, clothes, soft furnishing - but I dare you to try and tell them they should be putting it into an ISA.
Enough of my cynicism on Pinterest and onto the good stuff - you can now measure how influential you are at pinning thanks to a new tool called PinPuff.
I'm pretty enthusiastic about measuring the results of social media but that doesn't mean all measurements represent the true worth of activity - take Klout for instance. The fact that people are now searching for a value in their Pinterest usage to me represents the next step in its growth.
PinPuff will be one in a wave of services looking to better understand why they are investing their businesses time in Pinterest but the algorithm created comes off wooly at present. The site looks at the subjects you're pinning about, travel, small dogs then looks at your followers, repins and comments and spits out a Pinfluence score. Mine is 32.08, supposedly a good score, which only makes my frown deepen as I have a measly 21 followers and next to no repins. How can this equate to me being a 'pinfluencer'? As PinPuff is still in beta you don't get a full profile breakdown but this is to come, as is the ability to add a monetary value to each pin (or the link you're pinning to). I look forward to seeing this.
With PinPuff peaking my interest on measuring influence on Pinterest I also looked at PinClout. They certainly have the idea right with the message on the homepage reading:
"PinClout is your source for Pinterest analytics. We are working to empower people and brands with the tools necessary to monitor trends, understand activity, and gauge impact, easily."
They have hopes of becoming more than just a scoring devise, something that Klout has never managed. PinClout has plans to offer analytics and data on Pinterest trends - this could prove useful to monitor ROI on your Pinterest campaign or to help plan one. My score here was slightly lower, just 25. PinClout is saying this is the case for most users as Pinterest is so new nobody can have a high score. I think they're trying to make us feel better.
I'll certainly be watching to see how these influence tools develop, I can't help but agree with tech journalist Courtney Boyd Myers when she predicted Klout will buy both of these sites when Pinterest's official API is released.