Pinterest Pin vs Board: Know the Difference

Seems you are new to the world of Pinterest. Welcome to the platform where you will find everything. Not kidding. Whether you are looking for weird things like a stone cake or DIY tutorials, outfit ideas, or quotes, Pinterest has everything at its disposal for you to enjoy.

It’s such an addictive platform that if you open it when you are bored, you will end up exploring it for hours. If you start by checking quotes, after some time you would be looking into how to make a pen holder from pens. For real.

Anyway, now that you have joined Pinterest, we will tell you a little bit about it. Pinterest is made up of Pins and Boards. Some people get confused between the two and it’s not their fault as the terms are used interchangeably a lot.

Let’s first understand what they are and then we’ll explain how they’re different.

Pins

The content on Pinterest is known as Pins. The things that you upload on Pinterest or the things that you see on Pinterest, all are called Pins.

For instance, in the world of Facebook, a Pin would be a Facebook post. You upload a post (Pin) and others can share and comment on it. Similarly, you will see others posts (Pins) on your wall or Pinterest feed.

Pins include images and websites only. That’s why you cannot directly upload a video to Pinterest, however, you can share its website. When a website is added, you will be taken to the original site.

Boards

Unlike Instagram posts, Pins are organized. And that happens because of Boards. Boards are collections where you organize or save your Pins. Yes, we have collections in Instagram too but one doesn’t necessarily need to use them. However, on Pinterest, Boards are extremely important and you cannot save Pins without a Board.

Basically, your Pinterest profile is made up of Boards. The Boards should be based on a theme, as it doesn’t make sense to create random Boards. For instance, you can have boards for quotes, business ideas, recipes, etc. In other words, Boards should have a purpose.

Difference between Pins and Boards

Usage

A Pin is an individual item. Pins are the main items that you interact with on Pinterest. Even if you don’t create a Board, you can just check other Pins. However, if you want organization or you want to save Pins, you have to use Boards, which is a group of Pins.

Follow Boards

On Pinterest, you cannot follow individual Pins. You can download them on your phone or save them on a Board in Pinterest itself, which in Pinterest’s language means you Pin them. You can also follow the profile that has posted the Pin.

However, if the other Pins of the person aren’t of your interest, it’s no use following that person. To avoid such situations, Pinterest doesn’t force you to follow the person but you simply follow the Board that has the Pin.

Let’s say you like a life quote Pin in someone’s profile. While checking other Pins from the same board, you realize that they are all relatable. However, when you check their other boards, they aren’t your type. So in cases like these, you don’t need to follow the profile, you can follow the individual Boards.

Download Pins

If you like a Pin, apart from saving it in your Pinterest profile, you can download individual Pins to your phone. While Pinterest doesn’t offer a native download button to download Boards, you can use some tricks to do so. You can check the trick and the method to download Pins in our other post here.

Privacy

The Boards that you create are public by default. Meaning anyone who visits your profile can see the Boards and the Pins in it. Similarly, these Pins and Boards will appear in the search results.

But if you want, you can make them private. The private Boards on Pinterest are known as Secret Boards. These Boards don’t appear on your profile and the Pins that you add to them won’t appear in the search results. It’s like your private collection center where you can save all the cool stuff without anyone peeking into it. To identify the Secret Boards, they have a lock icon before their name.

However, Pinterest lets you manually share the Secret Board with your friends. When you share a Secret Board with them, they can view the Pins in it.

It’s not rocket science to create a Secret Board. All you need to do is turn the toggle on for Secret while creating a Board. You can also change the privacy of existing Boards to Secret in the Edit Board page.

Limit

Similar to other social networks, Pinterest has also put a limit on the numbers of Boards and Pins that you can create. In the case of Pins, you can have 200,000 Pins including the secret pins.

When it comes to Boards, you can be a member of 500 Boards. This includes Secret Boards and the Boards that are created by someone else but you are a member.

Have Fun

Now that you know the difference between Pins and Boards, it’s time to explore Pinterest. Have fun checking out all the amazing Pins.