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Zappos Suggests Purchases Based On Pinterest Posts

Zappos -- a unit of Amazon Inc. -- has created a service that recommends purchases based on what users post on Pinterest.  “The new Web page … is called PinPointing and suggests Zappos products, such as shoes, dresses and swimsuits, based on Pinterest posts,” Bloomberg reports.

“Zappos apparently got approval for the new service from Pinterest, though the companies aren’t officially teaming up in any way,” the Total Pinterest blog writes. Yet, despite the buzz around Pinterest, preliminary results of Zappos’ new product have been mixed.

As Will Young, director of Zappos Labs, tells Bloomberg, Pinterest users are far more likely to share a purchase than Twitter or Facebook users -- but that shared items generate far less revenue than Twitter or Facebook.

“This is a big problem for Pinterest, because the whole idea of the site is that it's supposed to be better at monetizing social activity than Twitter or Facebook,” Business Insider comments.

“Pinterest recently raised $100 million on a $1.5 billion valuation, largely on its promise as a social shopping phenomenon,” AllTwitter writes. “While we’ll need a lot more evidence before doing a complete 180 on that position, this data from Amazon does inject a little darkness on Pinterest’s otherwise shining light.”

Pinterest aside, Web watchers found early results from Zappos’ new project revealing. “Wow...Amazon Researchers Say a Twitter post drives 16x More Revenue vs Facebook,” tweeted Sam Decker, CEO of social network information curator Mass Relevance.

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