Pinterest Introduces ‘Secret’ Boards Ahead Of Holiday Shopping Season

Pinterest secret boards now exist, sparing us all from the embarrassment of a nasty comment from our moms on Facebook when we pin a picture of furry handcuffs to the board “Romantic Night In.”

Pinterest secret boards are a bit of functionality Pinterest users have wished for for quite a while, given the service’s historically open layout as well as the site’s ability and tendency to publish activity to sites like Facebook and expose your likes and pins to all your friends and relatives.

Pinterest secret boards serve another function though, as Christmas and holiday shopping kick off with the impending arrival of Black Friday in just a few weeks.

While Pinterest seems to have begun as a social and primarily sharing-based venture, the site has also made headway as a simple link organization utility for many users.

Pinterest may have been originally been the domain of shoppers overall, but many users anticipating weddings and having babies have used it to great effect to share and save information purposed plan events and purchase supplies for these milestones, which in turn people to mine the pins of others doing the same as well. Social media — it’s social!

So it makes sense not only that Pinterest secret boards are finally an available function but that the feature would roll out just before Christmas, Hanukkah, and/or Kwanzaa.

Over on the Pinterest blog, Evrhet Milam writes:

“We hope that secret boards will make Pinterest even more useful. You can use secret boards to keep track of holiday gifts, plan a special event, or work on a project you aren’t yet ready to share with the rest of the world. You can keep your secret boards to yourself or invite family and friends to pin with you.”

Those who use Pinterest as a heavily-relied upon tool to organize their web links can now add “Christmas shopping” to their list of Pinterest applications and keep prying eyes from learning that they’re getting a new iPad case or pair of boots or nesting Russian doll-shaped tumblers for the holidays.

Will you be creating some Pinterest secret boards to organize your Christmas gifts this year?