The image-sharing network Pinterest released a new analytics tool this week that serves up lots of data about how its users engage with your website's content. Here are some of the questions you can now answer pretty easily. (more...)

The Buttry Diary | Pinterest | Pottstown Mercury The Pottstown (Pa.) Mercury is using a Pinterest board of wanted-criminal mugshots to engage readers and help police make arrests. Reporter Brandie Kessler explains the project to Digital First Media's Steve Buttry:

I had put a list together in a slideshow on our website long before the Pinterest board, but the slideshow kept freezing or not working and it was difficult to update and difficult to highlight on Facebook and Twitter. (more...)

Digiday | The Motley Fool
News publishers have been experimenting with the fast-growing, image-curation network Pinterest to see what value it might deliver. Referral data aggregated by Shareaholic from 200,000 websites shows Pinterest driving 1.19 percent of visits, growing steadily each month and exceeding Twitter and StumbleUpon referrals.

But Pinterest's growth trend has been cooling, and Josh Sternberg writes that "for many news publishers, which often tend to judge social platforms by the hard metric of traffic referrals, Pinterest is a dud." The highly social Atlantic and BuzzFeed websites say it's not a big factor, Sternberg reports, and The New York Times says social referrals of all types account for less than 5 percent of its traffic.

"This comes back to how people use Pinterest," Sternberg says. "It’s not a site for discovering or sharing textual content, which is the business that The Atlantic, the NYT and many other news publishers are in." Niche magazines that focus on visual content and female audiences are seeing better results.

Earlier: Journalism professors find uses for Pinterest (Poynter) | Recipes, vertical photos shared most on Pinterest (Poynter).

Dan Zarrella
Social media data analyst Dan Zarrella has tracked what kind of content gets "repinned" most often on Pinterest.

The lessons: Items about food (particularly recipes) and tall vertical photos seem to get the most sharing traction. So the photo embedded here, for example, seems almost irresistible to a Pinterest user. Images about design and style are the most commonly pinned overall.

The most pinned words are: love, home, things, style, ideas. Related: Those Pinterest recipes? Sometimes not so good (Gaston Gazette) | Pinterest is now the 3rd most-visited social network (AllFacebook) | Amazon, eBay add Pinterest sharing buttons (TechCrunch) || Earlier: How journalism professors are using Pinterest (Poynter) | Pinterest updates terms of use (Poynter).

Pinterest | Forbes
Pinterest has updated the legal policies governing its service. The terms lay groundwork for new features: private pinboards and an API. They also set strict rules against copyright violations and clarify that Pinterest will not sell uploaded content. || Related: How The Wall Street Journal uses Pinterest (10,000 Words) | Pinterest drops its "avoid self promotion" directive (The Wall Street Journal) || Earlier: As Pinterest grows visitors 52% in one month, journalism profs find news uses for it (Poynter)

comScore | Fortune | MindShift
The number of people visiting Pinterest exploded by 52 percent in February to 17.8 million, according to new comScore data. The curation-focused social network reached that mark faster than Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube and has "added an estimated 40% to 50% more subscribers each month," according to a Fortune Magazine feature that asks whether Pinterest is the next Facebook. CEO and Co-founder Ben Silbermann tells Fortune:

"When you open Pinterest, it should feel like someone has hand-made a book for you," he explains. "Every item should feel like it's handpicked for you by a person you care about."

Handpicked -- and legal. After photographer Kirsten Kowalski blogged about copyright concerns on Pinterest, Silbermann called her and they spoke for more than an hour. "The company will shortly update its terms of service," Fortune confirms, "though Silbermann notes they follow the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." (more...)

Washington Post | The Next Web
Pinterest is telling content creators it does care about the potential for copyright violations as its millions of users "pin" images from all over the Web. The company notes it lets any website opt-out of having content shared to Pinterest, and is responsive to takedown requests. Most sites seem happy to work with the burgeoning network, however, because it drives significant traffic. Facebook, Google and YouTube are among the biggest beneficiaries. || Related: Revamped Pinterest profile pages, iPad app coming soon (CNN) | How to track your website's content on Pinterest (Mashable) | Women trust Pinterest more than Facebook or Twitter (Adweek) | Pinterest fueled by curation-over-content trend (ReadWriteWeb) | Founder talks about the road to success (Inc.) || Earlier: A list of newspapers on Pinterest