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Andréa Mallard, Pinterest's global CMO, talks the social media app's safety and visual search features. "We've decided that it's absolutely unacceptable that any time spent on a platform like ours would result in people being more depressed, more anxious, feeling worse about themselves than when they arrived," she said.

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00:00We've decided that it's absolutely unacceptable that any time spent on a platform like ours would
00:05result in people being more depressed, more anxious, feeling worse about themselves than
00:10when they arrived. So when our new CEO Bill Reddy started at Pinterest about three years ago, he was
00:21entirely unapologetic about a desire to ensure that Pinterest remained the safest, most emotionally
00:29healthy place on the internet. And what impressed me the most was that he was very willing to lose
00:34users in order to do it. So he instituted a number of broad both policy and product features.
00:42One thing that we instituted was a concept that we call private by default or private only. So if you
00:47are under 16, your account is private only, meaning strangers cannot find you on the internet. People
00:54cannot talk to you if you don't know them on Pinterest. And if you're under 18, it's private
01:00by default. And that's something you would have to override in order to change that. So, you know,
01:05if you're a young person and I have many young people in my life, if they want to use Pinterest,
01:10they can connect with a friend if they want to share a board, if they have a dorm room idea and
01:13they want to get the opinion of their would-be roommate, that's absolutely fine. But it's
01:18completely impossible for someone who doesn't know you to comment on you in any way. And, you know,
01:24we actually think it's crazy that the opposite is true. You know, that just because you're using a
01:29social platform that actually is licensed for anybody to say anything to you or try to solicit
01:35you or sell something. I mean, these are awful things. We wouldn't allow it in the real world.
01:39There's no reason we should allow it online. And so that's an example of a policy that Bill
01:44put into place. And, you know, the day he did, I think our stock dropped 20%. What's amazing,
01:49of course, though, is that that was the market speaking, but actually the users loved it. We
01:55have more users than ever. There are two reasons young people say they use Pinterest. Number one,
02:00because they feel like Pinterest really gets them. Number two, because it is the last positive corner
02:06of the internet. It's an oasis from the toxicity of the other platforms. So we've never had more users
02:11who've been more engaged than the ones we have today. Similarly, we recently instituted
02:16a phone-free school policy. So I think Bill Reddy has been the only tech CEO who's come out and
02:23advocated for that. Not only that, if you're school-aged, and I have university, college,
02:29and middle school kids in my house, but if my high schooler opens her Pinterest app during the school
02:35hour, she'll get a pop-up that says, you know, focus is a beautiful thing. We want to protect yours.
02:40And not only are we asking you to come back after the bell rings, we're giving you a link so you can
02:45turn off all your notifications. So these are, I think, very high integrity choices that have not
02:50only been the right thing for our users, but they've been the right thing for our business too. And we're
02:54trying to demonstrate to everybody that you can do the right thing and have a great business at the
02:59same time. So one thing we've announced at Cannes is some of our new visual search features.
03:04The number one thing every single person on Pinterest has been asking for since we began was an
03:08ability to take action on everything they see. So, and of course, my favorite definition of
03:13inspiration is it's about inciting the urge to act. So we have all this beautiful imagery,
03:18all these beautiful ideas on Pinterest, and now you can not only shop or make or do all of them,
03:23we've made that possible, but you can search them visually. So that means if I see a beautiful image
03:28of a great kitchen, for example, it could be I'm really interested in the gorgeous vase on the counter.
03:33Well, I can zoom into that and actually search through that vase. Or if I see a beautiful outfit
03:38I like, but you know, I want that skirt to be shorter or a different color, I can easily use
03:44visual search features to make that happen for myself. So we think this is actually the future
03:48of search. We are all human visual creatures after all. And it's a much more, I think, intuitive,
03:54dimensional way to figure out who you are and what you like, versus trying to come up with keywords,
04:00especially for young people who, I don't know about you, but they certainly can't describe
04:04who they are yet. They're not supposed to be able to, but they're certainly willing to start
04:08intuiting their way aesthetically through a lot of topics and categories that interest them. So
04:14this visual search has been fantastic. And we've, you know, been able to work to create a large brand
04:21campaign around this notion of visual search and help people do something I think is really important,
04:26which is, you know, what we call unfollowing. So it's one thing to follow what everyone else
04:30likes, but it's another thing entirely to create a life you love. And you can do that when you're
04:36following your own intuition through, you know, literally billions of beautiful images.

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