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Quarantine and lockdown, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have had an massive effect on social media and interesting trends are beginning to emerge.
Globally, Pinterest has seen increases in searches, saves and newly created boards in the past six months for topics such as home improvement, at-home workouts, and shopping for baby products essentials and gifts lists.
While life in quarantine has been unexpected, it hasn’t stopped people from planning and looking ahead to the future. There has been a 35 per cent increase in the number of new monthly boards created and a 30 per cent increase in collaborative boards created over the last six months.
As a result, Pinterest has launched new features to boards to make it easier to plan and manifest all of that visual inspiration from the platform into real life, with new notes to self directly on Pins, board favourites, automatic grouping of Pins into sections to organise ideas into themes, suggested board section templates and a board toolbar. New features include:
- Notes to self: a new section on saved Pins that allows Pinners to add private notes to Pins, like “try this for brunch” or “this will go well with the living room rug”.
- With active boards containing more than 150 Pins, the new board toolbar makes it easier to sort through Pins with an easy-to-navigate section at the top showing all of the actions that can be taken on a board — from exploring more ideas related to Pins to organising, accessing notes, and even shopping lists.
- Board favourites: Pinners can mark top Pins as a favourite on boards by tapping the star icon in the board toolbar to easily find. Sort boards by favourite Pins and make it easier to find top ideas and take action.
- Grouping your Pins: Consider the new and improved boards as a personal assistant. Pinterest uses its technology to suggest sections to organise your boards. For example, perhaps you have a food board with an endless number of recipes you want to try, but you’ll be much more likely to try them if organised into sections such as ‘breakfast recipes’ and ‘dessert recipes’.
- Suggested board templates: In addition to automatic grouping, Pinterest is providing Pinners with a guided experience as they begin their project starting from when they save their first Pin.
People go to Pinterest to plan, discover and act on new ideas. Boards on Pinterest helps curate those ideas. With a board, Pinterest users are able to save and organise the ideas they discover so that they can try them later. This year, as Pinners plan what to shop, figure out new routines, and how to improve their homes while on lockdown, Pinterest has seen newly created boards titled dream lifestyle increase three-fold.
Additional planning trends include:
- Quarantine babies: In the past six months, there’s been a historic increase in boards created for baby products. The number of Pinterest boards created for shopping and wish lists with titles such as 'baby products' is now 78 times greater.
- Home Improvement: As people look for ways to make their homes more efficient for working, schooling, outdoor living, increased cooking and family entertainment options, newly created boards for home improvement projects with titles including, 'homeschool room design' (11x), 'furniture projects' (+68%) and 'small home gyms' (+48%) have been skyrocketing.
- At-home workouts: More time at home and less commuting means defining balance for the self, driving an increase in fitness and wellness boards with titles like, 'workout videos' (6x), 'gym workout for beginners' (7x) and 'grounding exercises' (5x).
- Shopping from the saves to the splurges: As people's needs change throughout quarantine, with some saving money they might normally have spent on travelling or other expenses, Pinners are shopping for a range of products. Pinterest reports an 83% increase in 'everyday essential products' boards and an 83% increase in 'my dream wardrobe' boards.
