As others mention here, I would say we shouldn't overdo the praise.
I can't really comment on the financial/entrepeneur side of Pinterest, but on the user side:
* It's a walled garden, closed source, force signup, the UX is bad even if aren't a user (dominating Google Image Search taking you too pictures you can't click), it has lot's of dark patterns
* It heavily suggests signing up with Facebook or Google, making all the critic on privacy of those platforms also theirs
* It has all the features for the mob-mentality, abuse and so on (Like system, sharing, popularity based rankings)
There aren't as many of these problems visible because of the content(no sensitive fotos, banking information or much politics) but that's not because of their great buiseness model but the theme of the platform...
I think one point you're missing is that the vast majority of people use Pinterest for reasons that are different than a social network. Even if it may have some of the same surface-level mechanisms (like a personalized feed or share buttons), it is very much _not_ used as a tool to broadcast personal updates, read news, or cultivate relationships among people. The average user treats it much more like a visual search engine with a bookmarking system built into it than a social network.
Also, this is a minor quibble, but Pinterest does not have a Like system any longer. I know because I worked on deprecating it.
Being totally ignorant of the site myself, the use case you mentioned was roughly how I had it described to me by my wife and her friends a few years ago: They use it as a 'scrapbook' for fashion/craft etc. ideas. -- not necessarily even sharing them.
I hate you need to sign-up for the site, even to just search, but recently for some reason I just bit the bullet and now I like to use it to gather game ideas assets and inspiration (d&d related).
Pinterest does have a good UX for their target users though. They are targeting people, like my wife, who use it to create a visual collection of ideas for the next remodel or the next quilt or next woodworking project. She is looking for pictures and what is currently trendy so Google Image Search alone doesn't solve her problem. She doesn't mind using her Facebook account because she will show off her completed projects there any way. I just don't think you are one of their target users.
Yep, I actively avoid pinterest because they seem to be so user hostile (at least to people who haven't signed up). I'm not going to make an account if your service teases functionality but behaves like a broken mess when I try to use it.
It very much reminds me of "Experts Exchange" back in the day, and we all know how that turned out. We just need someone to come up with the Stack Overflow of the Pinterest world.
I agree on most of this but the mob mentality bit. I’ve seen very little of that on Pinterest because people use it differently. It’s more like a lose kind of bookmarking tool than a space for socializing and the elements where people talk with each other are not very prominent in the UI.
>not because of their great business model, but the theme of the platform...
Isn’t the theme of the platform part of what goes into the business model?
Instagram is the one social network whose users actually have positive associations with its brand. That too isn’t based on the business model, but the fact that the platform fosters engagement though posting photos rather than sowing discord among your friends and family (Facebook) and stoking outrage mobs to gang up on random celebrities (Twitter).
I can't really comment on the user side of Pinterest, but on the financial side.
* It's a walled garden, closed source, forced signup, the UX is bad (dominating Google Image Search taking you to pictures you can't click), lots of dark patterns. As a result, users can't leave. This leads to more money.
* It heavily suggests signing up with Facebook or Google, who help Pinterest make a lot of money through tracking.
* It has all the features for the mob-mentality, abuse and so on (Like system, sharing, popularity based rankings). This keeps users on the site, which makes Pinterest more money.
Pinterest is just following common, tried and true strategies. Good for them.
-- end --
It doesn't look like there is a viable way to fix this.
Honestly the best solution I can think of would be to have a well-funded benevolent organization that fights for user privacy and makes products good/easy enough to be popular. Unfortunately, no such organization exists.
I hate how Pinterest results appear in Google Image Searches then tries to make me sign up/log in to see the result. Google didn't like it when Experts Exchange used to pull that kind of trick.
I think it's "[search term' -pinterest.com], but I'd need to double check. GIS has started to de-emphasize Pinterest hits though, but for some queries like "furniture", there's probably still tons of hits from there.
People who use it love it, people who don't hate it - because it severely degrades the utility of image searching in Google, due to showing up so frequently and employing dark UI patterns. Pretty polarizing.
I can't really comment on the financial/entrepeneur side of Pinterest, but on the user side:
* It's a walled garden, closed source, force signup, the UX is bad even if aren't a user (dominating Google Image Search taking you too pictures you can't click), it has lot's of dark patterns
* It heavily suggests signing up with Facebook or Google, making all the critic on privacy of those platforms also theirs
* It has all the features for the mob-mentality, abuse and so on (Like system, sharing, popularity based rankings)
There aren't as many of these problems visible because of the content(no sensitive fotos, banking information or much politics) but that's not because of their great buiseness model but the theme of the platform...