If you’ve been following the story of Pinterest‘s meteoric rise with more than just passing interest, you’ve probably noticed the criticism the site has received for its privacy policy.

Stories like this one from Above the Law have detailed how Pinterest “screws its users.” Sites like The Social Interest had plenty of suggestions about how Pinterest could make things better.

Pinterest has been listening. This morning they sent the following email to their users:

Updated Terms of Service

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working on an update to our Terms. When we first launched Pinterest, we used a standard set of Terms. We think that the updated Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy are easier to understand and better reflect the direction our company is headed in the future. We’d encourage you to read these changes in their entirety, but we thought there were a few changes worth noting.

• Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.
• We updated our Acceptable Use Policy and we will not allow pins that explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse.
• We released simpler tools for anyone to report alleged copyright or trademark infringements.
• Finally, we added language that will pave the way for new features such as a Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.

We think these changes are important and we encourage you to review the new documents here. These terms will go into effect for all users on April 6, 2012.

Like everything at Pinterest, these updates are a work in progress that we will continue to improve upon. We’re working hard to make Pinterest the best place for you to find inspiration from people who share your interest. We’ve gotten a lot of help from our community as we’ve crafted these Terms.

Thanks!

Ben & the Pinterest Team

Sounds good. But does it solve all the potential issues? First Post Technology thinks that maybe it doesn’t. We’ll see. Meanwhile, TechCrunch and The Next Web discuss not only the fact that the terms are updated, but address why that’s happening now: because Pinterest is preparing to develop and release APIs for third-party services and developers.

Takeaway for marketers: If you think Pinterest is growing fast now, wait till those APIs hit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2012 at 9:47 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Social Media.