Last week, Pinterest decided that it's time to make its pinboards into something with a more of the geo-location relevance. This new "map," made out of photos and reviews and images and information in the form of Place Pins, works like this. Users can create boards around a specific location or with a specific theme in mind (think along the lines of Fourqsquare's "Best Martinis in NYC" lists) and whatever information they place pin in on the board gets displayed on the map. Hey, isn't this a nice way to share your recent trip to Mexico City? Equally nice is exploring the city you were just about to go to, all in one place. This is quite a nice addition to users' online planning process, where quest for inspiration and location-related information beats all other steps in the funnel.
More interesting to me, however, are the partnership opportunities that place pins offer. As of now, Pinterest banded up with Foursquare to use its API (Foursuare allows users lists and also shows them on the map, but information is limited to photos and reviews) and Mapbox, which provided the maps.
In the works are partnerships with Disney, BBC Travel, Conde Nast Traveler and the load of other travel-related publications and hotels. Four Seasons, for example, has pulled its Foursquare reviews and photos and turned them into place pins for its "Gastronomic Travel" board. You can check it out here. Conde Nast traveler, on the other hand, pulls info directly from its magazine for its "Top 100 Hotels in the World" list.
Fun times will start when place pinboards get to be embeddable, so all the above mentioned partners can display thematic itineraries on their own sites.
I am curious to explore all the new maps over the territory, fueled by the great content and a lot of existing user activity. Can see them being quite useful.