Pinterest reaches out to retailers with API

New York -- The hot social-sharing site Pinterest has released its first API for developers. It will help stores and brands display which of their items were most frequently and recently pinned. The first partners for the service include Zappos, Walmart, Disney, and Nestle, reflecting how the site is looking to increase revenue generation with advertising and cross-marketing. (An API, short for application programming interface, is code that allows developers to create apps that interface with a popular web service or other software.)



“We’re releasing documentation for multiple APIs that will roll out to partners over the coming weeks,” the company said on its blog. “These will include Top Pins API (showcase top clicked pins / top re-pins, launching on partner sites today); Domain search (surface trending results for keywords such as “Men’s Boots,” “Thanksgiving recipes,” or “Fashion Week”); Most Recent (bring a stream of your latest pins to your site); and Related Pins (suggest other pins people may like based on the item or content they’re viewing).



Going forward, Pinterest said, it will give sites more ways to mash up their data, like most-recent and related pins, and to add information about which items and keywords are trending on Pinterest into their search engines.



In the coming weeks, Pinterest will release additional API endpoints that will surface different groups of Pins on partner sites. In addition to Walmart, Target and Zappos, early adopters include AllRecipes, Better Homes and Garden, BuzzFeed, Disney sites Babble and BabyZone, Elle Magazine, Mashable, ModCloth, NBC News Digital’s iVillage.com, Nestlé, Random House, Snapguide, Wayfair, Whole Foods, Zulily and on the soon-to-launch Spoonful and Tastebook.