Pinterest has launched a brand new feature – category pages.  These pages act as a guide to Pinterest, showing some broadly targeted pins in each category area and allowing users to narrow down to specific types of content displayed.

They also want users to take advantage of these new categories by following them so that pins that appear on these category pages will also appear on the user’s homepage stream as well.  They seem to be trying to expand user’s horizons on Pinterest beyond simply searching for keywords and following their favorite pinners.  The more variety of pins they can show users, the more variety of paid promoted pins they can show that user.

Pinterest uses their new Outdoors category as an example.  When you go to that specific category, you will see pins on “Related Interests” which are just narrowed down categories for related outdoor activities such as Hiking, Camping and Running.  Then users can drill down even more.  If they had clicking the Hiking category, then they will see more hiking related options such as Canoeing and Rock Climbing.  Each category also shows recent pins as well as the tranditional information you see on user profile pages, such as number of followers and activity.

It also raises the question about whether these new category pages, which are mostly a broader topic area than what you might see on individual user’s boards, were designed as a way to show the new Pinterest advertising on highly trafficked yet broader subject areas to be able to show a greater diversity of promoted pins, without them seeming too off-topic.  And if these category pages end up being used frequently by users, Pinterest could potentially charge a premium for promoted pins appearing on these specific pages, before users drill down to the more tightly targeted boards.

Pinterest has also added a new Following section for users, so that users can easily unfollow users or boards that may no longer hold interest, or to find a specific pinner or board that might have been followed previously.

Users can access the new category pages here.  The available topic areas are quite broad, such as Architecture and Art, users just need to click then explore.

The new category pages seem to be released only in the US at this time, or they are doing a slower release.  While the categories show in other countries, it does not display things like related interests.