Soon after Pinterest’s net worth was revealed to be $3.8 billion, the social platform that successfully got people swimming in craft ideas, hair tutorials, recipes, and outfit collages (and, in effect, successfully causing major social media brain strain, especially in women) was quick to bank on their steadily growing popularity by coming up with additional features. And yesterday, the company announced a new one that will surely appeal to vagabond travelers who enjoy scoping out the site for potential vacation destinations.
The new feature is called “Place Pins,” and, according to Pinterest, is a response to over 750 million destinations users pin on the site and plan to go to in person (someday). Pinterest is optimistic that this particular option will be the push people need to turn their travel fantasies into actual realities.
To use Place Pins to plan your next trip, select “Add a map” when you create a new board, or edit an existing board’s settings and change it to “Add a map.”
You can then map locations you would normally just pin onto your board, so you get a straightforward plot of places you’d like to visit. You can upload your own photo, or pin an existing one linked to your chosen destination. It will appear as a photo album sourced from Foursquare and can also include details like a place’s address, phone number, and more.
You can even collaborate using a group board to plan excursions with friends.
Pinterest requested the help of a few travel-centric companies – such as Airbnb, Travel Advisor, NatGeo Travel, and Lonely Planet – to create their own boards, which users may peruse through a special feed and use as inspiration for their own plans.
According to Pinterest, Place Pins is not related to their Promoted Pins experiment and is a completely separate initiative, much like other ones highlighting product, article, recipe, and movie pins. Place Pins can also be accessed through your smartphone, so you can pin and add new places as you … go places. Because clearly you’re not entrenched enough into the wonderful world of Pinterest-mania, right?
