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Pinterest, one of the most wonderful and elegantly designed products has gone to rats.

The performance was smooth, the UX was kickass, the content was lit.

I once watched Ben's interview and absolutely loved his thought process on how he identified a problem and went ahead to build a solution for it.

Unlike Facebook/Instagram, which are designed to make you compete for dopamine shots and trigger jealousy, Pinterest was kind of different where you have a custom feed and yet no comparison or showing off. Cool right?

However, towards the end of the interview, Ben did mention that they are going (or already bagged) another round of cash. I was sceptical of why that was needed when they already had good reach, scaled product, and overall a stable ecosystem. They could instead focus on exit plans.

Pinterst has become a piece of garbage now. Cluttered with all the original features, which made it different, have been taken away. Moreover, not only the product is complicated and difficult to understand (let alone use), it is bloated with ads. The amount of ads and redirection of every search result to their shopping tab is just nauseating.

Feed has same content for days, if not weeks. You can no way customise the content been showcased and no matter how many times you report unwanted or inappropriate images, shit still shows up. The algo is rusted now.

Remember kids, this is NOT how you build and grow products. Lesson learned, capitalism has the power to destroy everything.

Comments
  • 1
    not the first plattform based on a good idea that gets worse when marketing and finance take control, same for headspace meditation app.

    Adding ads is one way to earn money, another alternative would be a paid ad-free membership, like flickr. To me, pinterest has integrated their ads ad least in an unobtrusive way (image tiles instead of mega ads, popovers and interstitials like the news magazines do).

    But another aspect I noted, when companies try to change their original product to earn more money, they just keep enough of the original product that it's not bad enough to make all of the original fans go away. Keep the established name to attract new users that did not know the old version anyway.
  • 0
    @fraktalisman I totally agree with this.

    I think Tumblr did a great job at this. Their product is more or less same and still functioning well with a small team.
  • 3
    What I also don't like about pinterest: they dominate google image search results (so they practically force you to create an account to continue watching the image), and they use about 100 different subdomains that all clutter my browser with unnecessary cookies.
  • 1
    @fraktalisman Hah! I got something for you

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...

    Forcing account creation is kind of norm in fancy startups these days as it all boils down to creating your profile and tracking your data.

    While I have PiHole protecting me from most of the crap, the amount of sub domains they have which bypass most filters to serve ads and content from same server is kind of annoying.
  • 2
    When talking about good platforms that went to shit because if money YouTube also comes to mind
  • 1
    @SoldierOfCode I lost hope on YouTube when Google acquired it.
  • 2
    @SoldierOfCode the ads on YouTube are out of control and making it available to play with your screen off only for premium users is greasy
  • 1
    I can understand ads, and dislike when people complain just about the fact that there are ads, but YouTube has far too many these days, and now when content creators can't even decide whether to have ads or not... It was very much of a dick move and a greedy cash grab

    Also why thE FUCK do you sometimes get the same ad and only it for like an entire week, no I don't want to buy that fucking shampoo and even if I did, watching the same ad five times in a row will make me not want to anymore
  • 1
    @yesNo Have you tried YouTube Vanced?

    @SoldierOfCode Yes and pretty much same with Spotify. So many things wrong with these companies.

    Not only creators no control over the ads (whether they want to monetise or not), but also these fucktards pay a very little percentage to them. I really hate that part.

    Moreover, when I spoke to folks from Spotify on LinkedIn, their arrogance was overflowing and same is reflected in the product.

    They are showing content occasionally in between ads. Initially I felt guilty for using ad blockers but now honestly, fuck Google and Spotify and others who mint money off creators and demonetise them for no reason.

    And for your frustration of seeing same ad twice and not wanting to buy the product, I am in the same boat but read about 'Familiarity effect' or 'Mere exposure effect'. And you will understand the crux of marketing. It is shitty for us but it works in their favour.
  • 1
    @Floydimus Don't know about Spotify because I pay for it, but anyways Spotify is different becsuse the music isn't free, Spotify is more like Netflix for songs rather than YouTube for songs, and they gotta pay for them.
  • 1
    @SoldierOfCode Well content from YouTube also is created by someone who needs to pay the bills.

    But keeping that argument aside, if we look at the percentage paid to artist by Spotify and other streaming services, Spotify is money whore.
  • 1
    @Floydimus why am I not surprised that YouTube is first place in Scrooge levels xD
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