Pinterest gets more in-board actions, gives attribution to SoundCloud, Etsy, others
Pinterest is making content creators of the Internet happier today, by providing more attribution tools for sites such as Etsy, 500px, Kickstarter, Slideshare, and SoundCloud.
Context & Ripple Effects
Pinterest is answering the copyright-theft accusations that Business Insider raised in February 2012 with a product fix rather than a legal one: richer in-board actions plus explicit attribution for content sourced from SoundCloud, Etsy, 500px, Kickstarter, and Slideshare. The timing matters because an AllThingsD report days earlier had Pinterest on pace to become the most significant driver of e-commerce referral traffic, which turns proper crediting from a courtesy into a commercial necessity.
The named partners arrive with momentum of their own — SoundCloud passed 10 million users in January and launched its 'Next' redesign in May — so Pinterest is wiring itself into sources whose creators actively want discovery. The hire of Google lawyer Michael Yang earlier in June signals the company is treating rights management as a competitive issue, not an afterthought.
First-order effects
- Creators and merchants on the five named platforms get a direct referral pipeline: pins of their work now carry visible attribution back to the source, right as Pinterest's e-commerce referral volume climbs.
- Pinterest defuses the February copyright narrative at the product level, giving its own counsel — newly reinforced by Michael Yang's arrival — a cleaner story for rights holders.
Second-order effects
- Platforms left out of the attribution list face pressure to make their content pin-friendly or negotiate their own integrations, since being unattributed on a top referral engine means losing credit and traffic.
- Etsy sellers and Kickstarter creators gain an incentive to optimize for pinning, shifting some merchandising effort toward Pinterest-friendly presentation of products and campaigns.
Third-order effects
- If attribution tooling keeps expanding, curated sharing platforms evolve from copyright liability into licensed distribution channels, with the referring platform holding the leverage over who gets credited.
- The pattern points toward attribution becoming table stakes for any consumer service that redistributes others' content at scale — a structural alternative to takedown-driven enforcement.
The trend: Social curation platforms are converting user reposting into formalized, attributed referral pipelines as they become primary drivers of commerce traffic.