Pinterest Drops Skimlinks, Might Try Ads; Says Copyright Issues Not A Significant Issue Yet

Pinterest has stopped using Skimlinks to monetize some of the “pins” that its users were publishing on the site and, in other news, the company also says that copyright issues haven’t been a “significent issue” to date.

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann has been making the rounds a bit this week (“finally,” some would say) and discussing some of the issues that have come up in light of the site’s stunning recent growth.

Silbermann contacted Josh Davis of LL Social, the site that helped spread the news about Pinterest adding affiliate links (via Skimlinks) to some of the content that users post on Pinterest. Davis writes about their conversation:

He indicated that the use of Skimlinks was a test, not a business plan, and that Pinterest had stopped using Skimlinks a week before I wrote the original story on the subject.

Davis points out that Pinterest a new section on its Help page about how the site makes money. That’s where Pinterest says it may try placing ads on the site in the future:

We’ve tested a few different approaches to making money such as affiliate links. We might also try adding advertisements, but we haven’t done this yet.

Pinterest & Copyright Issues

Silbermann also spoke with the Wall Street Journal recently about the site’s growth and business plans. The touchy subject of copyright came up there, but Silbermann told the WSJ that copyright issues “haven’t been a significant issue so far.”

Like other sites that accept user-submitted content, Pinterest is likely legally immune from copyright claims related to its users’ activity on the site. (But I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination.)

The site has a very detailed page with instructions for rights owners that want to report copyright infringement on Pinterest. Interestingly, Silbermann himself is listed as the company’s copyright agent; Pinterest will likely need to hire a dedicated person for that job as the site grows.