5. Pinterest's Colleen Stauffer

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest. Inspire your audience and grow your company on Pinterest with a free business account. Learn more at business.pinterest.com. It's time to geek out. Hello and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navarra, sponsored by Pinterest. I am Matt Navarra.

And I'm Martin SFP Bryant. And today our guest is Well, our sponsor. But don't worry, this isn't some bland content marketing thing. It is actually going to be a really interesting interview.

I agree.

It's going to be a good one. Yes, this week we'll be joined by Colleen Stauffer, who's the director of global business marketing at Pinterest, and she'll be with us just after the news.

You know, I'm starting to think that a high proportion of people who listen to this podcast do so in the gym. As I mentioned it last week, and someone came up to me in the office where I work and he said, I was just listening to the podcast and you mentioned someone listening in the gym. Were you mentioning me there? And I forgot that he told me he listened in the gym as well. So we had two gym listeners. There must be more. And hello to Johnny as well, who told me he was listening while cleaning the kitchen floor. So yeah, people are very active while they listen to this podcast, it seems.

I'm obviously mixing in the wrong circles. I don't have these people telling me these unusual places. Thankfully, I do have people saying that they're listening to the podcast. I was actually in Facebook yesterday in London talking to some of the team there and pleasantly surprised and happy that they were listening to it. A large number of people who I was chatting to there said that they'd heard the podcast. So that was really good to hear as well.. But, uh, as always, we do mention at the end of the show for those that, um, are listening into the podcast, and when we, and they sometimes they're skipping the goodbyes maybe because they want to get on with their day, which is no, you know, absolutely fine. But you can leave a voice message and we remind people at the end of the show that you can do this using Anchor. So if you visit anchor.fm/geekoutmattnavarra, you'll find an option to record a message. So tell us what you think of the show, give us some feedback, suggest things, just whatever you like it and make it as fun as you want. Uh, and as we said in the last episode, we'll try and see if we can get some of those out on the podcast as well. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #GeekOutQuestions, and you can find me there as @MattNavarra.

And I'm @martinsfp. So Matt, what have you been up to this week?

I've been all over the place. So I've been in London quite a lot. I was in London last week to meet with two clients, um, dealing with somebody having a lot of Instagram issues, which was fun to sort of help them figure out those issues. Um, and another client of mine who was looking into, uh, the younger people using social media in their organization and advising them on how best to how they use social to assist them with their roles in work. So that was good. And yesterday I was, as I say, I was at Facebook chatting to a few people there and discussing the podcast and all sorts of interesting things that they're getting up to. And I was also a judge for the Social Day Awards in London. So I was in charge of judging the category Best Internal Marketer. So internal team rather than an agency or anything else. So the results are in and those people will be notified in the coming weeks. So that should be good to see them celebrate their successes. Other than that, I've been discussing the podcast with you. Me and you have been talking about it quite heavily, haven't we? And discussing where we're going to go with it next, what we're going to do. Are we going to stay and do some more episodes, or are we going to kind of have a pause? So some more, some more debate and discussion between us to be had, I think. But I'm pretty sure we'll come back for some more.

Absolutely. I think we absolutely will. It's been a great response. Yeah, my, my week has basically been preparing for what I'm doing as soon as we stop recording this, which is I'm flying to Austria, Vienna, where I'm going to be giving a talk to a bunch of tech startups about how to to approach the media and to get their story out. And the best way of doing that, because that's totally changed. The way that the media covers startups has totally changed in the last 5 years. Startups used to be a big hot property that everyone wanted to cover, the hottest new startups. But because big tech companies like Facebook do so much, it means that the startups have a much harder time getting into the news. So I'll be talking to them about that. And actually, that leads quite well onto our next section, doesn't it?

It does indeed. Let's have a look at what's been going on in the world of news, because I believe it's been a very heavy news week for Facebook, which is pretty much most weeks of the year in 2019, so there's no surprises there, but it's particularly heavy with Facebook. So what's the first thing on the agenda for news today?

Yeah, so a few weeks ago, news broke that Facebook is going to have a news tab, and the juiciest bit for news publishers was that publishers were going to get paid. Now Facebook and news publishers haven't had the greatest relationship over the years. We've had things like Instant Articles and all things like that where there's been a lot of interest and everyone's been talking about how Facebook is going to make things great for publishers after having taken away quite a lot of their advertising revenue. And it's always worked out, it's always ended in tears, hasn't it? I mean, we'll remember, we both remember the time when you could put a post on Facebook if you were a publisher and the traffic would immediately rocket through the roof. And then they tightened that tap, didn't they? So it's sore times for that. So this, anyway, this news tab is still happening, but only around a quarter of the companies that are partnering with Facebook on it are actually going to get paid. What's that all about, Matt?

Yeah, so you're right.

Facebook and publishers have not had the best relationship. And you see this all goes in ebbs and flows. You know, you have moments where they seem to be not interested in doing anything much with news or news publishers. Then suddenly they're back in favor with Facebook, and Facebook gives them a bunch of new features and points them in the direction of what they should do to generate that traffic. Because you're right, I can remember times at the Next Web where we would put something up on our Facebook page page. We had at the time over a million page likes, and then you could just see these huge spikes from the organic reach. Um, and then we were told to pivot to video, and, uh, that was the way to go. And lots of publishers did that, and several went out of business because of the costs and expense of it and it not working out and being a, a highly monetizable way of running a publishing business. Uh, and now this is, uh, they went away with a sort of flavor of interest with publishers for a while, and now they're back again. So now they're creating this News tab, and I think some of the numbers I was seeing banded around in some of the articles about it were up to sort of $3 or $4 million for a multiple, multi-year deal with some of the bigger names that you'd expect to be in there, and a lot less or nothing for a large number of others. I think that it's gonna launch potentially as early as the end of October 2019, so like not far from where we are now. And there's about 200 publications that are on this list of what they deem as trustworthy, reputable sources of news, which comes partly from their surveys and research they've done over the past year apparently, according to the article in the Wall Street Journal this week. So I can see this again coming, unstuck and there being arguments and debates around it and publishers feeling hard done by. And also this, this, there's a bit that hasn't been talked about here about local news, which is a separate piece of work that the news partnerships team at Facebook is working on for their Today In feature, which is at the moment dominated in the US because they haven't rolled it out further than that. So there's a separate piece of this jigsaw for the news publishers. So interesting developments, evolving situation, and still a little bit of testing the waters from Facebook and news publishing. So we'll, we'll see where that one goes.

Next up in our Facebook news roundup, just because there's so much Facebook news this week, is that there was an interesting article at the weekend which set a few people's angry buttons going. I was certainly angry when I saw it at first, which was saying that basically the UK and US law enforcement would be able to get WhatsApp messages from Facebook, Messenger messages from Facebook, if there are suspects who they suspect have been, you know, planning a terrorist attack or WhatsApp or whatever, and they'd be able to actually get those messages from Facebook under this, under this agreement. Now, it's not what it seems. It sounded like from there like there'd been some kind of behind-the-scenes deal to put a backdoor in WhatsApp, and it's in a— well, the article from The Times didn't actually explain what that was. It didn't say how this would work or why it was being done or anything. So everyone immediately leapt to that conclusion that there would be some kind of break in the encryption in WhatsApp, which would be definitely a worse thing worse thing than a good thing overall, as much as it is good to keep tabs on criminals. But it turned out that that wasn't the case at all. And basically the reporting around that from both the Times and Bloomberg, which followed up on the story, had the stories had been written by political journalists rather than tech journalists. So they had completely missed the story. The story is just that it's basically a paperwork story. You know, if, if the law enforcement want a message, they want to find out what somebody has been doing, they might be able to get some metadata from Facebook about the times messages have been sent or whatever, but not a lot more than that. And it certainly wasn't about message contents or breaking encryption and stuff. So it was a lot less of a story than it seemed, which for me, the main story here is that you should always have tech journalists contributing to tech stories or there will be this kind of confusion. One of the guys who wrote the Bloomberg story, his main role is writing about base metals. So not sure quite how he ended up writing about Facebook, but there we go.

Yeah, no, you're right.

I immediately thought that they, they created this, um, kind of break and opening in the encryption for messaging. And this was the beginning of a very, uh, interesting period for encryption experts and, and people who know that this, this way of approaching the problems of understanding what, uh, terrorists or other kind of bad actors, as Facebook likes to call them, are doing in these encrypted messaging things on WhatsApp. Um, but, uh, quite quickly I saw your tweet or post about it and quite— and realized that this wasn't the case. Um, but it did open up a— reopen for me in my mind this, this discussion of what's going to happen here, because we've got this growing desire and need for, from, for many people around the world to have more encryption in messaging. And I think Twitter is still testing its own encryption for its direct messaging product. But, um, what, what, what's the solution for when you, um, law enforcement agencies need to possibly get that information in more detail behind some encryption? Or if there is an incident in the world where there's— it's likely, or it's possible, there's reason to suspect that there's information between people who may have been involved in such terrorist attacks or other activities that need to be looked into behind these encryption walls for messaging apps? Is that kind of, you know, right to privacy and encryption is a great thing, but at the same time, how do you moderate and manage some situations where these discussions are going on, where there's maybe a public need to have some of this information? It's a bit like the debate we were having last week to do with who's the person who makes the rules around taking content down. Should it be the role of government? Should it be the role of Facebook? And it's one that will roll and roll. So reopen an interesting debate, but it's not one that's going to be quickly solved. I still think there's a lot of things to be figured out there.

Yeah. And if you're listening thinking, yeah, well, obviously police should be able to access encrypted messages because, you know, it's about security. Well, police can't listen to what the terrorists are talking about in their basement, can they? Unless they, unless they go in physically and bug the house. So, you know, there are always going to be places where people can't listen to things. And I think it's right that security services don't have an all-seeing eye, because if they do, then that leads to 1984 dictatorships and all that kind of thing. So it leads to a dark place. So not having 100% knowledge given to security services is on balance, although it does lead to some problems, I think, better, a better situation. But yeah, there we go.

Yes.

And then the final piece for this week is around a story that broke. Well, it was a couple of days ago. If you're you're listening to this today on Thursday, the release of the podcast, is about the Facebook audio leak. So this was a story to do with Mark Zuckerberg in his internal meetings, wasn't it, Martin?

Yeah. So Casey Newton at The Verge got hold of a 2-hour recording of an internal meeting at Facebook where Zuckerberg was basically rallying the troops and talking about how, for example, an Elizabeth Warren US presidency would be an existential threat. He was talking about how to deal with TikTok. And basically, there was nothing really controversial here. But it was really interesting to hear, uh, Zuckerberg talking in a more internal way rather than the way he talks publicly.

Yeah, I had a couple of people come to me and say, oh, do you think it was an unofficial official unofficial leak and intentional? I, I don't think so, but you can't ever tell with these things. But let's assume for now that it is what it was and, uh, people leaked it and it wasn't planned or prepared at all. And I think you're right, the, the things that came out from the transcripts that didn't say anything that surprised me that, you know, was being discussed all that Mark Zuckerberg thinks or had said to his teams internally. But yeah, it just made for some nice gossip around the social media water cooler this week, I'm sure, for lots of people. And I'm sure they're not particularly happy that it leaked. I'd be interested to see how they tackle the trying to find who did leak the information because then it's notoriously secretive. And I think there's been stories in the past about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and his kind of demands for absolute kind of privacy and silence inside his own organization, which is quite ironic given some of the stuff Facebook's got up to itself. So that bit was interesting. And also there was a piece that was written up by Josh Constine about Mark Zuckerberg's appreciation, or maybe lack of, of the threat from them for TikTok and how he talks about— Mark Zuckerberg talks about TikTok being similar to the Explore tab on Instagram in some ways, kind of like a rolling stories feed of things from around the Instagram world. And I think Josh's view is that that kind of completely misses the point and is worrying for Facebook if that's how he sees it as being. It's maybe oversimplifying it, but I'm sure Mark's views on it are a lot deeper than that. But overall, yeah, interesting leak, worth having a look at the transcript. And I think there might even be more to come from it. I'm not sure if they've released everything yet. Maybe they have. Not sure, but have a look. So take a look and see what you think.

And it was interesting to see that the way Facebook dealt with it publicly was Mark Zuckerberg linked to it on Facebook. He said, hey, somebody's leaked one of our internal meetings.

Go have a look.

Trying to own the story a bit.

Bit— what's the saying, you know, um, when the horse is already bolted? It did feel a little bit about them, that about it, when I saw that shared. But then it kind of makes sense to, uh, to do in many ways. But, um, I'm sure they got a huge traffic boost at The Verge for that. It was a lovely share from Mr. Zuckerberg. So lucky them.

So that's the news. Now, Matt, who's our guest this week?

Now we're joined by Colleen Storfer from Pinterest. Uh, thanks for joining us, um, Colleen. And tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, and both at Pinterest and, and your career to date, because there's lots of things I'm sure you've been involved in.

And, uh, some people will know you and some people won't.

So yeah, tell us a bit about you.

Yeah, well, thank you for having me, first of all. So I currently lead global business marketing at Pinterest, which candidly is a dream job for me to work for a brand that, you know, brings inspiration to create life people love and really working for a brand that I use and I believe in the mission so closely. But I can quickly take you back of, you know, where I started my career. I am from Chicago originally. And so I started where I think most marketers should always start their careers in the agency agency world. So, you know, really learning a ton of different skills in advertising and social media. Um, so I bounced around different agencies in Chicago working for all sorts of clients, um, and, you know, brands and products that maybe I didn't actually use or love. And so, um, it kind of just got a good span of, of what I, what I found my passion was, and, and that was really in digital media. Um, so then I moved to San Francisco and I took a job in-house. Sometimes we say you went to the dark side if you go from agency to becoming the actual client. And I worked at Clorox. So, you know, they're really learning integrated marketing and working for a brand that, you know, is obviously an old 100-plus-year-old brand and understanding, you know, truly how to reach a consumer at all different touchpoints. And while I was there, I, you know, which is always a good lesson is, you know, make friends with your sellers. So the people that were selling ads to me at Pinterest Pinterest. And the more I talked to them, the more I really got excited about what this company was building and creating. And for me, especially in my career, it was a newer marketing team. And so really the opportunity to help build the business marketing team from scratch and work with other passionate marketers that were ready to, as I say, do the work again versus just manage the work. Everyone at Pinterest is a doer. And so that is exciting to me and really to help bring this brand to life. And, and it's been an exciting journey so far, and we have so much good work to still do. So, um, yeah, that's just a little bit about me.

So, um, can you tell us a little bit about the role that you perform now for Pinterest? What specifically does your day-to-day involve? What are you responsible for?

Yeah, absolutely. So in my current role at Pinterest, I am responsible for really telling the story of inspiration to other brands as well as creators. Uh, and even more importantly, is really finding stories from brands and creators that have been successful on Pinterest. So, um, to get like even more tactical leading campaigns. So, um, really getting out in the world and saying, hey businesses, did you know that actually brands are additive on Pinterest? Because people come to Pinterest with an idea in their mind and that, that's the perfect point for a brand to intercept them and say, we can solve that problem or be that solution for you. Um, and so my job is really to get that Pinterest story out to brands and creators, which I think it's a pretty fun and challenging job because I was that brand. Um, and so marketing to other marketers, I think, is probably a more fun job than even marketing to even consumers because they are the most critical when it comes to marketing. You can't fool them. Um, and so that in itself was a challenge that excited me.

Got you.

And so this show's called Geek Out. So what do you geek out over? What's your geeky kind of interest, um, outside of Pinterest?

For me, it goes a little bit into like mental wellness and how people's brains work in that. So that's actually why Pinterest aligns with myself and my career is that, you know, people come to Pinterest to be inspired. We actually have data that says people come there and they feel happier and more fulfilled. And so when I think about that in my life outside of Pinterest, you know, I think everyone's always striving for what is that like pinnacle of happiness and striving for what they can accomplish now or in the future, that kind of thing. And so honestly, like mental wellness is something I think that the industry has exploded on. I have probably like 6 apps on my phone that are for mental wellness. And it's something interesting to me because it's never been a focus. And now it's suddenly this huge uptick in, in apps, in, you know, workout classes, essential oils, just like all this industry industry that's sprouted up from people being less stressed.

I know what you mean. I think a lot of my friends and family are all into the meditation apps and they're kind of like aura apps where you can kind of listen to kind of like make yourself feel better by listening to someone kind of get you into that meditative state. It's a whole industry revolving around it. But yeah, Martin.

Pinterest. Let's talk about Pinterest for a bit. It's a platform that people either really, really get. I was having my haircut the other day. I was listening to a conversation. In the next chair across, and the woman there was doing her house up. She was getting a lot of redecoration done, and she was talking about Pinterest, which kind of lit up my ears a bit, obviously preparing for this, and she seemed very much into it. But then there are lots of people who maybe it's more of a mystery to them. And it certainly, if you look at the tech news, for example, it certainly seems to fly under the radar quite a bit in terms of coverage in certain parts of the media. So why do you think Pinterest is maybe misunderstood?

You know, that is an interesting question. We talk a lot about a lot here because We don't think of ourselves as social media. However, we— the company grew up in a time with a lot of social apps, so I feel like it got really grouped within that world. And so therefore, people immediately want to compare it to other social media when it's really different. So we actually describe it as personal media because if you think about it, you're going on the platform for something, an idea or a problem you're trying to solve or a dream that you want to make into a reality, and it's all about you. You don't go there to look photos of your friends. You don't even usually follow people you know. You follow people that have similar tastes and passions as you do. And so I think once we get through that comprehension barrier of people understanding that it's actually just an amazing visual search platform that you can go to when you have an idea or you want to be inspired, um, or you want to go do something. And especially, you know, as as it more and more pertains to buy something as well, they're shopping products, then they understand the difference between it and between social media. But again, because we grew up in that world, I think there's been that barrier of knowledge there.

And what is it specifically about Pinterest that does, do you think, set it apart from what you call traditional social networks? There are some similarities in how it could be defined as a social network in some ways, but I do understand also that there are many ways it does set itself apart because it's not a traditional social network? You know, what are the things that for you make it set itself apart from the likes of a Facebook or an Instagram or a Twitter?

Honestly, you know, it's really the— well, one, it's highly visual, right? We always have this quote here that, you know, when you see it is when you have that idea, you're in a different mindset on Pinterest than you are on another social platform. You're, you're coming there with that idea, which I think is a different mindset than if you come to social media. And then when you— because it's so visual, you have that idea, but you don't exactly know. It's like if I was going to say to you, picture your favorite living room or what you want your living room to be, you kind of have an idea in your head, but until you see it, then you really know, and then you want to go take action on it. So those, those are the elements that really make it different is, is the mindset of someone coming to Pinterest and then also what it delivers for you in terms of inspiration and then, and then making that action to go buy or do or get offline. You know, that's obviously an important point for us. You know, we, we like when people get offline and don't use the app because hopefully we've solved their desire, need, or to-do list that they wanted to tackle that day, and then they went and did it because of Pinterest.

Got you.

And a lot of the audience that work in social media marketing and community management, how do social media managers and marketers tend to use it? What are they telling you that they— the value that they're getting from it compared to something else that they're using in for similar or different purposes?

So a few things, you know, on the tactical level. For on Pinterest, organic reach is still, um, pretty substantial. So we haven't changed like an algorithm or anything like that to drop organic reach. And actually, um, pins are seen 50 times more by non-followers than for followers. So a lot of the social media managers, they've seen really high increase in driving traffic to to their brand or agency or companies or creators to their actual website because of the way it works is the platform allows content to be served that you wouldn't see just because you follow the person. So we've seen a lot of—

Thank you.

Yeah, a lot of great metrics in terms of traffic back to websites.

And what, what can you give us some headline figures at the moment? So where is Pinterest stacked up in, in terms of, um, the number of users that, you know, business, uh, businesses and brands that are using it, kind of, you know, give us some idea of the scale and, and scope and size of, of Pinterest right now for those that are not on top of that kind of stuff. Do you have any you could tell us?

Yeah, of course. So we have more than, um, 300 million monthly users every month. So, um, and that's globally. And, um, in terms of ideas, which could also be named pins, which on our platform, right, is all the content, it's called pins. Um, we have over 200 billion pins that have been saved by people and 4 billion boards. So boards are the collection of pins that people— I actually did something really interesting this year at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. We surfaced all of the boards that had the word dream in them from across the world. And I think there was— I can't— don't quote me on this thing. There was probably like at least, you know, a billion of them. And there was all different ideas in there from dream wedding to to dream hamster house to, you know, dream wardrobe, you know, things that were practical and things that were just totally out there, which is obviously really exciting for us. You know, it's what makes Pinterest unique is the creators that put the content on their platform and then our pinners, which are the people that use Pinterest, the way that they really bring their dreams and want to bring them into reality.

Is it still a platform platform that's dominated, um, by females, um, because there was always this, um, belief for, certainly for a long time in the earlier days of Pinterest, that it was very much dominated as a, a more female, uh, uh, social network. And not that there's any specific reason why it should be for men or for women. Is, is that still the case, and that it has a higher than average user base of, of females, or is that kind of balanced out now? How, how is the kind of demographics of a typical Pinterest user these days?

Yeah, so we, um, happily are still 70% female and 30% male. You know, obviously we're really proud of that. Um, it's funny, I, I like to say, I'm like, females are the decision makers, so of course you want more females on your platform. But, um, we want males as well. Uh, but we are very proud of, of having that 70/30, um, majority female.

Got you.

And then finally around, um, this sort of area really is that people are are used to buying ads on Google or Facebook and Twitter. It's more familiar to the average social media manager or digital marketing expert. But I would, I would suspect that there's a lot of more mystery or lack of understanding or experience potentially by an average social media manager, if there is such a thing, in terms of advertising on Pinterest. And so could you just tell us a little bit about Pinterest and advertising, some of the kind of core options or how it might differ from what a social media manager might experience from trying to place ads on one of the other platforms?

Absolutely. So we have, you know, about tens of thousands of businesses on, on Pinterest. So, um, you know, from all different verticals, right? Retail, CPG, home, um, style, um, travel, financial services. You know, people are looking for all of these ideas and tips. Um, when we think about a social media manager on the platform, you know, we have a free business account to sign up, um, and that really gets you access to, you know, our analytics as well as then our Ads Manager dashboard. And more tactically, you know, it's, it's by auction, so it's not, you know, very dissimilar from other social networks. And where it actually gets really interesting and exciting for us is our insights. So because we know people's tastes and passions, um, they can— we can really target by that versus just, you know, the similar demographics of age and location, which are also important. But if you really you really want to reach someone in, you know, a mindset of a new job and they need a new wardrobe, that is something you can absolutely target on Pinterest.

From my point of view, the way I use Pinterest, it's less about inspiration and ideas and planning for the future. For me, it's more about nostalgia. I found it to be a really, really interesting nostalgia engine. So I put together a board of toys from my childhood and a lot of it is the kind of action figures from the '80s. So the kind of Transformers Transformers and He-Man and things like that. And what I found was I put a few up there and then every day there are new suggestions that come in for things I could pin to add to the board. And a lot of them are toys I completely forgot existed. I had one of those. So, so how does that work? There are other networks obviously where you have this kind of visual recommendation where it recognizes things. So how does it work on Pinterest?

Of course, the more you use it, like any platform AI, the better it gets for you in terms of personalization and recommendations. And we call it tuning your home feed. And so we have something coming very soon of just continuously optimizing that tuning of your home feed. And I know this is about geeking out, but without getting too technical with you guys, it's really like an easy comprehensive view of all your boards, your activity history, following the different topics, and then you can toggle on and off. So if you maybe want less of those toys or if you want more of them, you'll be able to tell the system your preferences, really. And so tuning your home feed is the, is the technical term we're using here. And, and the more you use it, the better it gets.

On a more broader level, you know, we've talked a little bit about how Pinterest works from an ad, um, ad marketing point of view and and some of the core features and stuff. But the, the pace of change in social media and particularly social media marketing and advertising, um, features and functionality is as fast as any other area of tech, I would say. Um, and it's evolved particularly over the last couple of years. Uh, and Facebook are constantly coming out with new things. Twitter's launched different video ad products, Google the same, and, and Pinterest has also had its own, uh, launch of different things that are going on. I just wondered how you see from your experience within Pinterest and in the other roles that you've had of how you see digital marketing evolving over the next few years, not just on Pinterest, but in a broader sense? What are your kind of sense of how things are moving and changing?

Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question because I'm sure you guys feel the same way. It's overwhelming. It's like you turn the corner, you turn the, you know, through your search engine or whatever, there's always something new, something new coming out. I would say, you know, it's gonna be interesting to see some of, you know, these newer platforms where they take their products, if they try to do more of parity or try to do something totally different. In terms of what Gen Z is looking for. Um, the Gen Z on our platform, we've seen some pretty interesting communities they've built and, and they're, you know, getting off other social networks because we've seen these insights of, you know, they really want to reconnect with themselves. And so I think, you know, for us, continuing that personalization and whatnot obviously will be super important. And then working with creators who have content that matches that. So that's another huge initiative for for us is, and I'm sure other platforms as well, is, is really engaging with more and more creators that have useful content to our platform. So when we think about our platform, we think about, we want creators that actually have made things, tastemakers that aren't— it's not truly about their image, but it's about inspiration. So thinking about, you know, interior designers or fashion stylists or makeup artists, it's more about what they create and make than about, you know, their face. So I think it will be continuously important for all platforms, but especially for us, to invest in, you know, authentic creators that then match the audience's needs there. But yeah, it's overwhelming. I would say there's so many new platforms that pop up every day. I feel for me, it's hard to keep up. I mean, I'd be curious how you guys keep up up with.

We're going to come on to a question about that. But I'm just thinking back as we're talking there about kind of future-looking things in social. And last week, we were fortunate to have Andrew Bosworth from Facebook, who's head of VR and AR there. And we were talking, obviously, about those particular pieces of technology and the developments in that area. Is that something that comes across your desk or discussions in Pinterest about how people will consume and use Pinterest in 10 years from now? Will they be in a VR, AR world, kind of like the style of Minority Report, swiping away things into boards that are interesting to you, or other ways that they were engaging with other people who have the same interests as them, you know, talking, taking it beyond the next 1 or 2 years, but 10 years from now, do you have ideas of how Pinterest might be experienced by the average user?

Yeah. So, I mean, I hope it's like, you know, swiping and moving, you know, everything you described sounds pretty amazing. You know, It fits actually really naturally with our platform. So I could see a world where, you know, as I went back to the quote we always say here, "You know it when you see it," is envisioning products in real life. So you have an empty room or you have a bedroom you want redone. It's like, what if it could be as simple as an extension of the camera within the Pinterest app and then exploring those different experiences and seeing it come in real life through AR? So I think that probably isn't too far off in terms in terms of, you know, all the technology that all these companies are exploring. I think, you know, for us, that could be something super exciting because everyone just wants to see how it will look at the end result versus, you know, just picturing someone else's room through our visual search. So I think that that would be really exciting for us, for sure.

You can just point at things with your AR glasses on, just point at something and pin it. That would be a fantastic interface, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that. We were talking about new platforms there and the new behavior that comes with them as well. So I've been spending quite a bit of time on TikTok lately, learning the kind of visual language and the behavioral language of that, how people use it, how the memes evolve on there and things. And it's certainly, you know, it's no secret, it's no great revelation to say that online communication is becoming more visual. Obviously Pinterest is part of that. What's your take on how we're changing our behaviors online?— kind of away from text maybe to a bit more, a bit more visual.

Yeah. I mean, obviously I agree with that because our platform is all about visual, visual search. Um, we, you know, we had, um, a thought leadership piece a few, maybe last year it was called, um, The Camera is the New Keyboard. And it really is like people are speaking more in visuals. I mean, you think about emojis and, and reactions and that kind of thing. And so, um, For us, you know, we feel like we're, we're on that, obviously that right track with being a, um, of course visual-first platform. Um, and for us, we've, you know, we think the future of search is visual, so less text and more images, um, which is, you know, exciting for us too.

So yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about the, the future features of Pinterest? You know, is there anything juicy and new that's coming coming up that, uh, with the brands, marketers, social media managers, etc., and could be looking forward to, whether it be some blue sky ideas that are really kind of out there, crazy, geeky, 5 to 10 years down the line, or something that you, you guys are working on now that we might see, um, shortly that we can get excited about?

What can you tell us at the moment?

Yeah, well, I, I don't know if you're not— it's not brand new, but it's, um, something that continuously improves if if you're familiar with our product Lens. So it's actually when you tap on an image, you'll see a really small box in the bottom right corner, and you can hover that box over anything within the image. So let's say you're looking at, you know, fall fashion, you would tap it over the pair of shoes in the image, and then it would come up with suggestions for those shoes of buying them. So whether it's the exact pair of shoes for other varieties of shoes like that, and then you can simply click to shop that. So that for me is obviously exciting, and that's a different way of searching. And something else we actually launched today is dark mode. So dark mode, you're probably familiar with it, Twitter has it as well, is something that we heard a lot from our pinners that they truly wanted. And that's because one of the— a big use case on our platform, which is actually something that a lot of our employees do here as well, is looking at quotes at night before you go to bed. So you're probably familiar with Pinterest has a ton of inspirational and motivational quotes. It's kind of the best way, um, speaking of mental wellness earlier, to end and start your day. And so by developing and launching the dark mode, obviously it just makes it even more calming and easier on the eyes.

Got you.

Got you. Well, we— that's some, some great stuff though coming up from Pinterest. But well, I guess one of the areas that we haven't touched upon yet is, um, cuz all of this stuff is quite positive and exciting and future-looking is some of the more current issues and challenges that make the headlines in social. I think, Martin, we were talking about this as well before we came on air. What was it we were going to ask about that?

Disinformation. I know Pinterest has done some interesting work around anti-vax campaigners and presenting information that counters some of the lies, I suppose, that people share around and myths that people share around vaccines. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so kind of just taking a step back, obviously our goal at Pinterest is to inspire pinners with useful and relevant ideas. And so, you know, frankly, there's nothing inspiring about health misinformation. So last year we made the decision to stop showing results for vaccine searches, and that would really help us to prevent people from potentially encountering misleading content. So that's just, you know, one step. Biggest step we took, of course. And one of our biggest learnings from that is that it's, it's critical to work with the experts in these fields because, you know, we're not. And so we worked with the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Center for Disease Control, and a few other health experts to really help us understand and address the content to make sure we were making making, you know, the right decisions. And, and yeah, so we're excited. So our work together, it did lead to actually new vaccine search experience that we announced in August. And so now if a pinner searches for measles or vaccine safety or hundreds of other health terms, they can reliably explore authoritative results from these leading health organizations that we worked with. So for us, you know, I'm excited that that's just one piece of being, you know, proud to work at Pinterest is, is us partnering with the experts in making, um, you know, the right decisions.

Do you think that's something that, uh, other platforms can learn from? Because we've obviously seen a lot of, uh, uh, problems with misinformation, especially with elections coming up and things on, on other platforms. Uh, are there lessons they can, they can learned from Pinterest?

Yeah, I mean, I certainly hope so. I like to think, you know, we're leading the charge, especially when it comes to this, you know, anti-vax world. And so I think, you know, the lesson there is really working with those experts in those fields because, you know, again, we're not medical experts at Pinterest, but you find the right partners to help you make the right decisions. And then it obviously benefits the people on your platform.

Do you think social media needs regulating?

That's a good question. You know, I can, I can really only speak for Pinterest and, and thinking about, you know, we take obviously every decision, you know, as it comes. It's, it's definitely, that's a, that's a broader question to be tackled maybe, maybe another day. But, um, you know, for us it's, it's continuously, we're always looking at the content on our platform and making, you know, hard policy decisions, um, to again, make sure that we truly bring to life our mission. Our mission, which is to inspire people and to create a life they love. And so that takes a lot of time, a lot of hard work, and a lot of hardworking people here at Pinterest to help make those calls.

And is there anything else from Pinterest that it's working on or it's considering or considered in terms of the well-being of its users? We were talking earlier on in the show here about well-being and being the importance of looking after users. And we've seen the likes of Facebook and Instagram and others implement features that give people more control over privacy or more control or understanding of the amount of time they're spending on the app. And I wondered if you could tell us anything briefly whilst we're on the topic of regulation and the safety aspect of using social media that Pinterest has done or is considered doing or is working on at all in that area.

Yeah, so we actually launched a new product a few months ago called Compassionate Search. And again, we worked with external experts at Stanford Stanford. And so if you go in the app and you search, for example, anxiety, it will show up with actually tools to help you curb that anxiety or the challenge that you're facing in terms of like a mental wellness. And so we'll actually give you like a few like exercises and tips, and again, all backed by the experts that we worked with specifically on that. So that's just one way that, you know, we're tackling some of these broader issues within Pinterest, especially because we know that people look at Pinterest as, you know, a positive platform. And so the more we can help it stay positive and have people feeling fulfilled and inspired, the better.

We've talked a bit about upcoming features and things, but what's the long-term future of Pinterest as a platform? Where's it going?

Yeah, so 3, you know, big areas I'm excited about specifically is I talked a little bit about investing more in creators. So, you know, creators are the reason the platform exists, right? Without creator content, we wouldn't have, you know, Pinners coming back or, you know, brands being inspired. And so, you know, investing more in creator tools and creators, actually featuring them in our marketing campaigns and whatnot. So I'm excited about that. Of course, the second one is shopping, making sure that, you know, Pinterest is more shoppable than ever. So we've launched a bunch of new products, catalogs, Shop the Look, and making sure that brands can not only help inspire people, but then actually help them click through and, and take that action and, and really bring that inspiration to the full circle. And then international. So we are expanding in more and more markets. We had a pretty big expansion last year, especially across Europe.. And so again, bringing inspiration to other parts in the world, you know, we're excited about. And frankly, for me, geeking out a little bit of like seeing the different use cases in the different countries of how people use it both across different verticals as well as, you know, different audiences.

Is there quite any interesting things to do with the use of Pinterest in different markets? It's a good point, which we hadn't thought about, you know, Is there any interesting stories or insights that you've heard about or you're aware of in terms of Pinterest use by somebody that's in Japan versus someone that's in London versus someone that's in Los Angeles? Is that something that you notice, or is it pretty much the same across the world?

Yeah, the categories themselves are pretty similar, so thinking about home and retail. But I would have to pull it up, but there's an interesting use case of a female Japanese Japanese, uh, band that they actually use Pinterest as their inspiration for their tour set. And so the backdrop is all pins, and, and they, they pretty much brought Pinterest in real life on their, um, on their tour. And so I love that example because they obviously were so passionate and they were inspired by the platform, and then they brought it, you know, to their tour. So I think that's a fun way.

And, and you mentioned about shopping with Pinterest. And I think in terms of if I was to pick another social network or— sorry, as you don't class yourselves as a social network, a social network that might be classed as similar to what Pinterest does. Let's phrase it that way. Instagram comes to mind, particularly with the fact that Instagram has very much set its stall out for this year in shopping and giving people the ability to purchase goods in the least— with the least amount of friction as possible. And there's some of the features and the ways that it's approaching it. I can't help but see see that there are similarities between somebody that might use Pinterest and someone that might use Instagram. And so I wonder if you could just— what's your view on what's similar and what's different and what's maybe better? Because you're obviously here as someone from Pinterest than somebody using Instagram for the same idea, which is I'm interested in certain products or features or tools or services. I'm going to go search on Instagram or I'm going to search on Facebook, on Pinterest. What are they going to get out of those two different experiences in your opinion?

Yeah, so I talked a little bit about the pinner mindset earlier. And so, you know, people always come to Pinterest to shop and get shopping inspiration. Our long-term vision, which probably won't be that long, let's be honest, especially in tech, is that every time you see a product you like on Pinterest, you'll be able to buy it or something like it just based on your unique taste. And so I think what really differentiates Pinterest itself and the shopping experience is related ideas. And so you can, you know, search something, for instance, obviously if you're searching for a dog collar and then related ideas would be dog bowls, dog bed, recipes to make dog, your own homemade dog food, and then the products of how to buy those. Maybe there's a click-through to an e-commerce site there too. So for us, what really differentiates is not only the exact thing you want to buy, but the related products and ideas around it to really, you know, fulfill that full, that full shopping experience. And, and also things maybe you haven't even thought of that would inspire you and help you really build your taste.

And as, as a, a social media marketer, um, um, you have, um, the choice to, you know, use various different platforms to reach your audience to either, as you say, inspire them or to sell products or to raise awareness of your, of your product launch or your brand in general. And you can place your ad spend in, in, in Pinterest and, and for the benefits you've just outlined. And, and also for, for something like Instagram and stuff. And I guess what would be your, your argument or your case for, for a social media manager or marketer with a set budget thinking, shall I put that money on Pinterest and push things there? Actually, I could put that money on, on Instagram and push it there instead. Both have large audiences and user bases. Both have some similarities and also a lot of differences. But I wonder what would, what would be the case you think that maybe a, a social media manager or digital marketer might wanna have in mind when they're thinking about making those sorts of decisions?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one thing that is, is actually very unique and interesting in the platform is, you know, brands are actually additive to the experience. So we say, you know, start inspiring, stop interrupting. You know, sometimes when you get an ad on another platform, it does feel like an interruption because you're actually there to look at your sister's vacation. But on Pinterest, you're looking for an idea, you're looking for a solution, and, you know, brands more times out of none are, are that, you know, solution to your problem. And so when you're thinking about choosing between places to put your ad spend, think about, you know, that people have that mindset of having a problem and wanting that solution, and a brand can be, you know, obviously very natural and organic to that experience. Makes sense versus, you know, being super interruptive or just almost out of place at times.

And so, Colleen, and also finally, we just wanted to ask, what are your top tips or tricks or maybe lesser-known features that everybody from the average social media manager through to the first-time user of Pinterest to the experienced user of Pinterest may not know about or you think should know because it's an amazing part of, of the Pinterest experience?

Yeah, so, you know, one thing we talk about, especially with creators and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs is using Pinterest is actually a gut check if you want to try to find a new idea or you have an idea and you want to see if it's out there already, especially if you're, you're starting a business. And so one of the actually more interesting tools that maybe people don't know as much about is our group boards and specifically collaboration in the group board. So now you can actually, you'll collaborate, you'll have boards that you can, you know, work with other people on and they could all join it. And then with within that group board, there's something that we launched called reactions. So people actually will be able to share feedback in terms of like loving something, liking something, being inspired by something. And so I, for me, like that's a great signal for a business to say, oh, I had this idea, I'm gonna pin it on this collaborative board and get a pretty quick reaction from, from pinners and see what their ideas are.

Awesome idea. I know that I've seen several people using that feature, but I can guarantee I guarantee that there's a ton of people out there that aren't aware of that, so they'll be pleased to, to know that for their future campaigns that they're planning, or just for themselves to use for, for their own purposes outside of work. So that's really useful. Um, Colleen, it's been great chatting to you, um, and I'm sure that people here will have enjoyed hearing some of the input you've given us about Pinterest and where it's heading. And can you tell people where they can find you online, uh, or anything you want to point them towards to, to help them in their day-to-day use of Pinterest?

For sure. So Um, we have a website business.pinterest.com, which is a great resource for, um, education, how to get started of the business account, as well as just more detail about a lot of the products and features. Uh, so definitely check out that website and then of course go to pinterest.com and just sign up and play around and start a board. And then the rabbit hole will begin where you'll find one thing to the next.

Awesome.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. That's Colleen Stauffer from Pinterest. Many thanks for coming with us today and chatting a bit more about Pinterest.

Thank you.

Time now for Quick Hits. Here's Matt with furtive features and beguiling beta tests you need to know about from social media companies this week.

You're not going to be able to keep that up for season after season. You're going to run out of these lovely little intros here. But I'll— there's another good one there, Martin. Well done for that one. Yes, there's a bumper edition this week. We'll see if we can get through A lot of them, some of them are quite small ones. That's why there's a large number. Let's, let's kick off with Facebook keyword alerts in groups. So Facebook has had a feature for some group admins for a little while this year that's been in test only where you can set up as an admin or a moderator of a group keywords that you want to be notified of that get mentioned, posted in, in, in your group by somebody. So there's, I can imagine plenty of use cases for admins if there's specific terms for products or, or maybe bad things that they're saying or good things they're saying or individual names of people, whatever it is as an admin of your group would be useful to know more quickly about, then this keywords feature is for you. I've seen this week that they're rolling out to a few more people and they've made it a bit more sophisticated in terms of the sorts of keywords and the number of keywords you can use and the triggers for them for notifications. So I hope to get hold of that and play with it soon. Twitter's had a couple of things. Twitter DM searching in the inbox is rolling out to iOS for those that didn't already have it. So this allows you to have a little search box above your DMs inside your app on iOS, and you can search quickly to find a specific thread that you were having a conversation with someone, which is something you'd expect in any average messaging app as a kind of starting thing. So it's a bit surprising that Twitter DMs haven't had that until now, but it does. And for those that didn't already have the feature, which was a separate filter, you know, filtered inbox, which is what we've seen on Facebook and other messaging platforms where you have that that famous other inbox where most things disappear to and you never realize people have been trying to get hold of you. Well, Face— um, Twitter has something similar, and if those who didn't have it before, you might start seeing that pop up and you have a separate inbox for some of the junk and spammy stuff that sometimes you get some good stuff in there that you need to, to check out. So keep an eye on that as well. YouTube filtering for comments. So they've given creators some additional options for filtering comments that allow you to discover comments that were hidden and buried amongst thousands of other comments. So this is great for creators and publishers of video on on YouTube that have a lot of followers, a substantial amount of engagement on their posts. And you can filter the comments and sort the comments by the subscriber count of the commenter, if they're asking a question, and a whole range of other different filtering options, which makes going through your comments and having a closer relationship with your audience much easier. So I think that's a very welcome change to comment filtering for YouTube users. Disappearing messages on WhatsApp, a bit like, you know, or self-destructing messages, whatever you'd like to call them, the ephemeral nature of messages Disappearing for WhatsApp is being boosted thanks to a tip-off from WABetaInfo on Twitter, who finds all these great things. It's something that seems to be in the beta app only, as you'd expect. There's no sign of if and when it will roll out, but effectively, as you'd imagine, you can post messages into your contacts as a normal WhatsApp message, but you can select them to be disappearing messages and have a sort of time limit as to how long those messages are there for before they disappear. So not entirely innovative. We've seen that in a few other messaging apps, but WhatsApp are playing with it as well. Instagram Maps view for saved collections. So thanks to Jane Wong who found this one. She was looking into Instagram's code on some of its apps and found that you can do saved collections already with things that you like as you travel around Instagram and you want to put into one sort of bucket of things, maybe, you know, quotes that you like from people or, you know, interesting news items if you follow some of the news accounts on Instagram, whatever it might be. Now it's added a map view so you can look at all your collections you've saved and see if they're, um, where on the map these items have, you've saved have been posted from. I, I guess there's a lack of information to be absolutely clear as to what the feature will enable you to do beyond the fact that it does show a map of saved collections. So we'll see how that one develops if it comes out at all. And Facebook have got an autocomplete comments feature that was spotted by Leon Green. So they've done various things like this before on Facebook where it suggests the person you might want to tag in the po— in your post or in a comment, and an emoji that you think is appropriate for you to post as a comment, it's suggesting to you. Well, this is kind of one step further. It's, it's suggesting almost 2 or 3 word comments, replies, almost a bit like Gmail's autocompletes and where it says thanks for that email or whatever else. So there's a suggestion that that might be being tested around Facebook. I haven't seen it myself, but that'd be an interesting one to be rolled out if it comes. And finally, we have something from Twitter, another feature Twitter is testing in its DM inbox, a shared content tabs feature where it's a bit like you see on WhatsApp. If you you look at a chat thread and then you go into the settings for that chat thread and you can see all the media that was shared within it. So the images, the links and anything else, and it's separated out to make it easier to find things you've shared in a conversation. Well, Twitter is trying something very similar with links and other tweets you've shared in the conversation and images. So this has only been spotted in the iOS beta app. And so it's not something that appears to be rolling out just yet, but it's positive signs that they are doing some stuff with DMs finally. And that, that does follow through from what we had a conversation with, with, uh, Sarah at Twitter on episode 1. So if you want to hear a bit more about what they're doing with that, maybe have a listen to the first podcast.

And that's it for this week with quick hits.

Quite a nice number of items for you to listen over and see what excites and interests you.

I have to say though, by way of translation, we have said beta quite a lot in this show this week, and Americans always get confused when Brits say beta. For you, we mean beta.

Yes, I know.

I get pulled up on that one by my American counterparts. But I'm sure it's a British podcast, so I'm going to stick with "beater." A Facebook exec I was interviewing once at a conference said to me—

I said "leverage" to him, and he was like, "Leverage? You mean leverage. There's no such word." And he mocked me. He mocked me for saying leverage like I'd said something wrong, when it's perfectly normal to say leverage in the UK. But there we go. Because we have levers. We don't have levers here, but there we go. It's all a diverse, wonderful world we live in.

Let's all just enjoy each other.

Other's language.

So next week we'll be speaking to—

shh, it's a secret.

Yes, we have someone lined up, but we're still waiting to get everything confirmed. So we'll hold off on confirming exactly who that is, but look out for Matt's tweets and my tweets for details of that a bit closer to the time.

Yes, and it will be our final week next week for season 1, so we'll have to make it a special one, that's for sure. And hopefully hopefully next week we'll be able to give some more information about what the next step is for the Geek Out with Matt Navarra, whether we'll be doing another season and when it will start and who the guests might be. We might be able to tease some people. So I'll give you some more information on that. But, but other than that, I think that's it for this week.

Yeah. Geek Out with Matt Navarra is a Big Revolution production. Find out more at bigrevolution.net. You can find me on Twitter as @martinsfp.

And I'm @mattnavarra on Twitter. And don't forget to tell everyone about the podcast and get those voice messages in on Anchor. Anchor.fm/geekoutmattnavarra, and you'll find the option to record a message and also join the Facebook groups. So Social Media Geek Out on Facebook. If this is the thing for you, things about all new stuff and discussing social media, then my Geek Out Facebook group is where you should head for. So go search it out on Facebook. So see you all next week. Goodbye, geeks.