Wow, Pinterest is really amping up their social activity recently!  You may remember the post I did only a week ago on Rich Pins, and why you need to act now if your website’s images are being pinned. And now Pinterest has just rolled out interactive mapping with help of Foursquare and MapBox.

What does this mean?  Check out my pinterest board, based on my hometown Toronto.

Below you’ll see what travel information is added to a pin. The info is a bit basic at the moment, but I can see Pinterest adding a collection of similar pins that are all tagged with the same location in the future!  It also gives a nice geographic location to get a better understanding of where a pin has come from.  If you’re a travel enthusiast, this may be the next big jump into sharing travel stories – which perhaps wasn’t a big niche on Pinterest up until now.  I’m really excited to see this new pinning ability taking off!

This is what travel information is added to a pin. The info is a bit basic at the moment, but I can see Pinterest adding a collection of similar pins that are all tagged with the same location in the future!
This is what travel information is added to a pin. The info is a bit basic at the moment, but I can see Pinterest adding a collection of similar pins that are all tagged with the same location in the future!

If you have a travel board and want to enable a map for the board’s background, simply open that specific board’s edit box, then click the “Add a Map?” toggle button and the interactive mapping is the generated.  The mapping doesn’t automatically generate for every single board, so your LOLz pin board is safe from features it doesn’t need.

Simply click the toggle button to turn on interactive mapping on your Pinterest board.
Simply click the toggle button to turn on interactive mapping on your Pinterest board.

To get the individual pin mapping started, click on the plus button on each pin (once the map toggle is on for that board), and then use the search map section to find the right location to choose from based on FourSquare results.

To get started, click on the plus button (once the map toggle is on for that board), and then use the search map section to find the right location to choose from based on FourSquare results.
To get started, click on the plus button (once the map toggle is on for that board), and then use the search map section to find the right location to choose from based on FourSquare results.

Need to remove or edit a location? Click on the edit icon on the specific pin and then “Remove Place”. You’ll be able to go back and enter the correct location.
Need to remove or edit a location? Click on the edit icon on the specific pin and then 'Remove Place'. You'll be able to go back and enter the correct location.
Need to remove or edit a location? Click on the edit icon on the specific pin and then ‘Remove Place’. You’ll be able to go back and enter the correct location.

What Pinterest has to say about their new interactive map, “Our maps are designed by Stamen Design, served by MapBox, created using data from © OpenStreetMap contributors and licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License.”
Cool huh?  A couple questions I currently have is: whether the Rich Pins information is included or over-written when adding location info to a pin, and if this only works on Business accounts (though I believe it would be pretty short sighted if that’s the case.)