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Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

Pinterest's Problem: https://www.pinterest.com/

Their front page does not explain what the hell it actually is, so all users that join them join because existing users already know what the site actually does and ask friends to join, which of course restricts new users to being close to their existing demographics.

Edit: While i typed this the teeny tiny "About" link at the bottom of the page disappeared. (?!)

Edit2: After browsing around on their about pages, they have a lot of breathless promises of virtually world peace caused by using Pinterest, but little concrete information of what the site is actually useful for. They could do with grabbing some people off the street and pitching them various explanations to find some where the person actually understands the site afterwards.

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I'd go a step beyond the frontpage: every time I reach Pinterest for some reason (usually due to a picture that I found on an image search), I'm hit by a very annoying "log in to see more" banner (usually before I reach the picture I was looking for). If Pinterest is a magazine, that banner is the guy taking it from my hands and scolding me "this is not a library!"

I now actively avoid Pinterest links.

Yep. The article is the first time I've ever learned what Pinterest actually is. I'm not going to commit to an account before I know what something is - signup walls prevent me from educating myself.

I don't think the Facebook landing page is better, but more people kind of know what it's about.

... or got in before they put up the signup wall.

I have the same experience. Pinterest is the ultimate "internet" company, using free labor to curate other people's content so they can sell ads to their users.

Which is not to say that the platform they provide, and the communities created on it, don't have value. It's just not enough to convince me to use it.

I love Pinterest.

That banner is user hostile and makes me not love Pinterest. The experience on mobile is worse. There's bizarre behaviour where an appstore link can seize focus. You're in Chrome, browsing the WWW, and suddenly Chrome minimises and the app store opens. Pinterest does this and it is horrible behaviour.

If you install the Pinterest app you get asked if you want to open the page in the app instead of your browser.

I would use Pinterest everyday if it wasn't for that.

If you do that on mobile you can view the image through a portal about 20% of your screen size - the rest is crowded in with some sort of chrome.

So it's like he grabs the mag from you, scolds you and then leaves the page you wanted to see open behind the counter where you can stand and squint at it for a bit if you like.

"I'm hit by a very annoying "log in to see more" banner"

This is a fairly recent change to the site and I agree it's obstructive and intensely irritating. Imagine if Flickr were to do something similar? Clearly Pinterest want to drive further registrations to their site, but this seems like such a rude and intrusive way of doing it.

Pinterest is an excellent source of visual inspiration and research often overlooked by many designers and developers. There are lots of excellent boards that collect examples of website, app and tablet designs. There is also a huge variety of illustration and graphic design examples of every style and colour imaginable. However, the new restrictions they've placed on viewing content mean that I no longer recommend Pinterest links.

The site is now practically unusable or explorable in a non logged in state. Not sure when this change took place, but almost every page will prevent the user from exploring the site, whether it's performing a search, clicking a photo or a member's name. The only one that doesn't restrict further actions is giant banner that takes up a quarter of the screen [1]. Nothing turns me off faster.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/ApC3Zgs.png

It's mind boggling to me that another company is employing the quora style growth tactics like this despite all the backlash quora has gotten over their practices. :(

Amazing, first time to their front page and I am greeted by a sign in dialog stating "She used Pinterest to roll her first Pasta"

oh I cannot seem to exit and see anything other than this dialog.

Why would I want to use a site that forces me to signup before it shows me what its good for?

Worse ... it's purposely obtuse. The sub-heading I got (the first time) was "She used Pinterest to roll her first pasta". I'm standing at work and don't have any ingredients so obviously this site couldn't be for me!

Counterpoint, it’s really hard to explain social media for users who don’t have an account - which could be a reason to do a "mock" profile with some of the most popular accounts in the feed.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr didn't do a good job of showing what they were good for either. Not that it's an excuse to get lazy in trying, of course.

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