[shubber]

I read from this that one of the core tenants of Web 2.0 was "content generation is for suckers" - Pinterest has in common with lots of other boom sites that they provide a venue for users to share the fruits of their own labors with others, and benefit from that fact, while the users rarely get anything out of the deal.

In Pinterest's case (like YouTube) it's possible, in fact, that their users might get really screwed, actually.

[rsingel]

Name a single YouTube user who has gotten "really screwed." They get their submitted vids taken down via DMCA notices and occasionally banned.

[NoPiece]

The Pinterest backlash reminds me more of the google news backlash. Old school businesses lording over their content, not realizing that there is more to gain by sharing. The terms need improvement, but their service is a boon to sites with content to share.

[aptwebapps]

Well, the terms are certainly ridiculous, but the Google News comparison doesn't quite work for me. Google News provides the headline, the byline, a brief snippet, and maybe a thumbnail. And a link, of course. If you want more than the headline, you need to click the link. The fact that publishers often allow you to bypass their paywall if the referrer is Google News shows that this traffic is valuable. But with Pinterest users are much less likely to visit the original site.

That doesn't mean there's no value for the owners of the content, e.g. if it's a pic of some sort of product there's probably quite a lot of upside.

But Youtube is still a much more valid comparison - it's user-uploaded content, not necessarily user-generated, whereas Google News is scraped.

Also, this is less substantive, but "lording over their content ... " ... you make it sound like it's not theirs or something.

[NoPiece]

I would guess over 90% of photos pinned on Pinterest are from pages that contain text and other photos. A single pinned photo is a lot like a news excerpt.

When I say "lording over their content" (which I agree is theirs), what I mean is that they are lording over their business model, or the perceived value of the content. They are thinking it is a zero sum game and that if you view their photo somewhere else, they lost something.

What are the real world scenarios where Pinterest isn't helping the content owner of a piece of pinned content? My experience is that it is a massive traffic driver; that users do indeed visit the original site, a lot. Even if many don't, that doesn't mean that is lost traffic.