As Facebook gears up for its initial public offering later this week, there’s been a lot of speculation about the company’s valuation. But there’s no denying that its worth to major and up-and-coming brands is invaluable, allowing Facebook users to interact and engage with companies in unprecedented ways.

A new infographic from social marketing firm SocialBakers takes a look at which global brands are making the most of their Facebook presence.

With 157 million Facebook users in the U.S. and 901 million on the site in total, about 83% of members are located outside the 50 states. This means there’s room for brands to grow their global reach.

Coca-Coca is the top global beverages brand on Facebook, according to SocialBakers. Meanwhile, Starbucks dominates the food retail sector and aConverse tops the retail apparel category.

The infographic also reveals the top ten countries in which global brands are engaging their audience, with the U.S. leading the pack with Starbucks, McDonald’s, Xbox, Walmart and Disneyland. Brazil comes in second — with L’Oreal Paris and Trident (Kraft) — followed by India with Vodafone and Pepsi.

SocialBakers also notes that among the fastest moving global brands are Halls, Axe, Nokia and Sony.

Which brands’ social media strategies do you believe are most impressive? Let us know your opinion in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2012/05/15/facebook-brands-global/

The Google Penguin Update, much like Panda last year, has angered SEOs and webmasters, most of whom say they have played by Google’s rules. Anchor text diversity and link relevancy may be two key factors of Penguin, according to more early analysis.

60% ‘Money Keyword’ Anchor Text

As discussed in “Google Penguin Update: 5 Types of Link Issues Harming Some Affected Websites”, spammy link signals (paid text links using exact match anchor text, comment spam, guest posts on questionable sites, article marketing sites, and links from dangerous sites) were among the issues for some sites affected by the algorithmic change.

Google was also hitting websites for aggressive anchor text for keywords in backlinks even before Penguin. Post-Penguin, anchor text diversity becomes more critical.

Microsite Masters examined historical data for thousands of websites to investigate whether sites that saw their rankings drop after Penguin were also guilty of having an unbalanced percentage of anchor text for “optimization” or “money” keywords (i.e., whatever term you’re trying to rank No. 1 for) as opposed to more natural-looking mix of linking anchor text (e.g., Your Website’s Title, example.com, www.example.com, “click here”, “here”, “blog post”, etc.).

The results are quite interesting. Websites that saw their search rankings tumble had a money keyword for anchor text in 65 percent or more of their inbound links, according to Microsite Masters (not that this percentage was a guarantee of being hit by Penguin):

As for sites that weren’t penalized, they had a much more natural looking backlink profile. Sites that had money keyword anchor text less than 50 percent of the time were “all but guaranteed” not to be affected by Penguin.

So essentially, what Google Penguin did was try to correct its rankings by discounting patterns it considers to be link spam. Granted, that potentially also opens the door to negative SEO attacks allowing competitors to harm sites by pointing a bunch of bad links at a competitor with weaker link profile, but that’s a subject of another discussion.

Links from Similar Niche Sites

Another finding was that Penguin also hit sites with few incoming links from domains and websites in the same niche, according to Microsite Masters. With Google, link quality and relevance are key, so by being able to attract quality links from authoritative domains in the same niche would be a clear sign that your site or page is relevant.

Basically, Google is looking for signals that can’t be manipulated as easily as anchor text. Getting a link from an authoritative or relevant site in the same niche is much harder to manipulate.

Open Site Explorer and ahrefs are a couple of tools you can use to get a view of your link profile and anchor text diversity.

Link Pruning

If Penguin has caught you for having “unnatural” or spammy links, “link pruning” is one way to go, according to veteran SEO Bruce Clay, who was interviewed by Search Engine Watch contributor Eric Enge. He advises you to consider evaluating your link profile at least once a month, looking for low quality links to remove.

Getting a link to your site removed is about twice as hard as successfully requesting a website link to you, Clay noted. In one case, a website actually tried to extort him to remove the bad links, demanding $10 per link.

If that were to happen, or you’re unable to add enough good links to counter the bad, or you’re otherwise unable to get a spammy link removed, Clay advised that one thing you can do is send Google a list of links you’ve tried to get removed and ask them to discount them, to show you’re making the effort.

Duplicate Content & Site Clean Up

While it’s easy to focus just on cleaning up your links in the hopes of a Penguin recovery, it could be something else dragging down your rankings. Perhaps a site Google views unfavorably has scraped your content, and is now either linking to you with some sort of “credit” or it failed to remove an internal link to your site from within the copy text, and now that link from a bad neighborhood is pointing at your website.

Is your content being duplicated on other websites? Not sure, try Copyscape.

If, after using the tool, you find that other sites have stolen your content, Google has this page to submit a DMCA report and request the removal of content. If Google removes that site, that’s one less bad backlink you have to worry about.

And while you’re at it, do a full spring cleaning or SEO audit to ensure there’s nothing you’re doing to harm yourself. Do an honest evaluation of your own website, or find an SEO pro who can do it for you.

For those websites that have impacted but haven’t done anything wrong, it may just be the case that you don’t have enough quality backlinks or your domain may not have authority. If you’ve been standing still, it’s doubtful your competitors have. It’s up to you to win back the rankings by optimizing for users, building a brand, and creating great content, because as we’ve learned multiple times now, Google won’t give anything to you.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy

Why do search engines always rank certain websites so highly? Sure, their content might be great, but their search engine optimization is definitely awesome. Indeed, for many sites, the search-engine spiders that crawl the web deliver a third or more of their traffic.

So crafting key parts of a page, like a headline, is critical. Perhaps the most famous example comes from the Huffington Post, which in February reeled in readers with the ingenious bait: “What Time Is the Super Bowl?”

In protest, writers for publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic each took turns slugging the SEO punching bag. The headlines describe their complaint: “Gene Weingarten Column Mentions Lady Gaga.” “This Boring Headline Is Written for Google.” “Google Doesn’t Laugh: Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO.”

In other words, algorithms don’t appreciate wit, irony, humor, or style. As reporter Steve Lohr put it, they’re “numbingly literal-minded.” Yes, it is one of the definitive 21st century truisms that in addition to writing for eternity, or for one’s mother, today’s writer must also write for Google.

That, however, doesn’t mean your headlines have to be stale. You can pen pun-based headlines all day long and maintain your journalistic integrity. Consider these examples from leading news organizations. As with most things in life, the media have adopted tactics that range from bad to the best.

Bad

Don’t write the same headline for both the article and the page. The difference is that an article title is what you show your readers, and a page title is what you show search engines. (With a good plug-in, like Page Title for Drupal or WordPress SEO for WordPress, you can rig most content management systems to separate the two.)
In the examples below, keywords pertaining to the subject of each article are, well, nowhere. Google doesn’t know if the Time article involves a beach called “Force One” or presidential vacations. Likewise, does “Hacked” mean a hacked Gmail password or the Stuxnet virus? And it’s unclear if “The Woman Who Knew Too Much” refers to Alice Stewart, who wrote a landmark biography by that name, or the former chairwoman of the congressional oversight panel monitoring the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Time
Article Title: “Beach Force One”
Page Title: Beach Force One
The Atlantic

Article Title: “Hacked!”
Page Title: Hacked!
Vanity Fair

Article Title: “The Woman Who Knew Too Much”
Page Title: The Woman Who Knew Too Much
Good

A better approach employs a single title that blends creativity with SEO punch. The idea is to craft headlines that are both self-explanatory and catchy. The compromise here allows both creativity (integrity) and technology (impact). It kills two birds with one keystroke.

Mashable
Article Title: “15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media”
Page Title: 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media
Bloomberg Businessweek

Article Title: “Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple”
Page Title: Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple
Gawker

Article Title: “What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs”
Page Title: What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs
Better

Headline writing crystallizes the writer’s dilemma. To a writer, a headline is a one-shot first impression that stops a mouse-moving, page-scrolling, attention-deprived user in his pixels and makes him wonder, “What is this?” The way to do this is with a two-title approach. True, the two-title technique means extra work. But absent sheer dumb luck, only extra work can deliver the eyeballs your content deserves. And considering the dramatic difference between the number of clicks generated by the first result Google returns vs. the second, the third, and the fourth, you owe it to yourself to play every angle in this ever-changing race to the top.

The New Yorker

Article Title: “Changing Times”
Page Title: Jill Abramson, New York Times’ First Woman Executive Editor
The Wall Street Journal

Article Title: “White House Party Crashers Cause a Hangover”
Page Title: Obama Asks for Review After Michaele and Tareq Salahi Crash White House State Dinner
Slate

Article Title: “Deliverance”
Page Title: U.S. Postal Service: Will It Survive?
Best

For those looking to wring every drop of SEO juice out of every article, there’s a fourth arrow in your quiver: the meta description. It is from here that Google often pulls the two-line “snippet” displayed for each webpage.
Why bother with a meta description? Simple: according to the SEO uber-site, SEOmoz.org, a description induces more clicks. At the same time, SEOmoz offers a caveat: While a description makes sense for an article that targets a few heavily searched terms, if you’re going after long-tail traffic, “it can sometimes be wiser” to forgo the description and let Google work its will. (If a description is missing, Google will create one, scraping the article for pertinent content.)

Yet SEOmoz’s qualifications aren’t written in stone. “In some cases,” search engines will “overrule the meta description” altogether.” But here too, it’s not always wise to bank on that possibility. Here’s how some of the best leverage this option.

New York Magazine
Article Title: “What’s Eating the NYPD?”
Page Title: Why the NYPD Is Turning on Ray Kelly
Meta Description: Ray Kelly has built the best police force in the country. Now it is turning on him.

Newsweek

Article Title: “Citizen Cain”
Page Title: Herman Cain’s Unlikely Republican Rise
Meta Description: Meet the rising GOP star who is confounding the pundits and much of black America.
The New York Times Magazine

Article Title: “When Is a Flip Not a Flop?”
Page Title: The Fate of the Republicans Who Supported Gay Marriage
Meta Description: The four Republicans who broke with their party on New York’s gay-marriage law were supposedly marked for electoral death.But that’s not exactly how it is working out.
SEO is an ever-evolving and much-debated field. It’s full of qualifications and judgment calls, backed by correlation studies and launched by conjecture. Those convoluted meta descriptions notwithstanding, start with the above best practices. With this foundation, you’ll be able to pull off one of the web’s hardest acts: you’ll be able to make Google laugh.

http://mashable.com/2012/05/08/google-seo-headlines/

Have you caught Instagram fever?

The flaming hot mobile app and recent $1 billion Facebook acquisition now has more than 50 million users.

This Online Colleges infographic shares some impressive stats behind the viral mobile photography app. Instagram gains one new user every second. One billion photos have been taken with the app — that’s roughly 58 photos uploaded each second.

Instagram’s on track to hit 100 million users — joining the ranks of LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook — two years after its initial iOS launch in October 2010.

The infographic, created by an online university database, focuses on college students’ adoption of the app. It suggests professors and campus professionals use Instagram to foster community through photo contests. It also recommends that students follow professors to learn about their interests outside of the classroom.

How have you seen colleges use Instagram? Do you think students and professors should interact on social networks?

http://mashable.com/2012/05/06/instagram-america/

When Facebook launched Timeline for brands last month, it wasn’t just marketers’ social media strategies that got turned upside down.

The new format also changed the way consumers experience brands on Facebook.

In a webcam eye-tracking study for Mashable by EyeTrackShop, participants spent less time looking at Wall posts and ads and more time looking at the cover photo on brands’ timelines than they did on their old Facebook Walls.

“The new Facebook Timeline limits the effective branding space, and the top portion of the page must be effectively utilized,” suggest the study’s authors.

EyeTrackShop recorded eye movements of 30 participants as they were shown brand profiles — before and after being converted to timeline — from the Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, “The Muppets” and Pepsi in 10-second intervals. What participants looked at on each webpage, for how long and in what order is recorded in the images below.

Results suggests a few ways our perception of Brands on Facebook has changed:

Ads on Facebook Timeline are less visible than ads on Facebook Brand Pages. While 30%-40% of study participants looked at ads on brand Timeline pages, 80% looked at them on Brand Pages. In both cases, ads placed higher up on the page fared better than those below them.
Cover photos are the new Facebook Wall (at least as far as attention goes). On brand pages, Wall posts were the star attraction. Viewers on average looked at them first and for the longest amount of time.
On the brand Timelines, however, viewers always looked at the cover photo first. In all but one case, they spent a longer time looking at it than at Timeline content.

Everyone will notice your cover photo. It’s larger than anything else and at the top of the page for a reason, and 100% of viewers looked at it. On average, they saw it in 0.5 seconds or less. Meanwhile, only 65% to 92% of viewers noticed profile photos on Brand Pages.
Viewers see Timeline content last. In every case, viewers looked at either the left or right column of Timeline content last — after ads, navigation buttons and brand logos.
Information that was invisible is now a focal point. Facebook moved the number of Likes, events and apps to prime top-and-center territory. It now gets more attention than when it was listed on the right-hand side of the page.
In the case of Good Morning America, for instance, the show’s 585,000 Likes went from being completely ignored on its Brand Page to being the biggest attention-getter on its Timeline.

Cover photos with faces attract the most attention. Good Morning America and “The Muppets” have cover photos with faces, whereas the Dallas Cowboys and Pepsi do not. The cover photos with faces attracted more attention.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/30/facebook-timeline-eyetrack-study/

Could Pinterest be the silver bullet for retailers on social media? Pinterest is clearly resonating with online consumers in a big way. To put it simply, customers who find a product via Pinterest are more likely to purchase it than those who find the product via other social networks.

Pinterest is hot. In fact, in March 2012 the site served up 2.3 billion page impressions to over 4 million unique visitors a day.

Who are these people? Why do Pinterest users respond so strongly to products that are pinned? This infographic from Tamba breaks down the stats, explaining why Pinterest is so powerful with its consumption-friendly audience.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/29/pinterest-interest/

Every company should run a quick social media audit each quarter to make sure content is properly optimized and every aspect of their social presence aligns with their brand. The great news is that it shouldn’t take more than an hour to perform.

This 60-minute audit is different from a full social business audit. You’re not looking deeply at goals, competitors, engagement rates, campaign efficiency, or ROI. The purpose of this is to address the kind of company maintenance issues that often get pushed off into the distance and are then forgotten. Addressing these small issues should help you build a better, more effective, and well branded social media presence. Here’s what you should cover.

1. Refine Your Design

The design of your social media profiles is part of your branding. This is why you should make sure to customize your backgrounds, avatars, and profile images so that they reflect your brand.
When it comes to a profile image, use the same one on all social media platforms to promote consistency. Check out Apple Vacations social profiles for a good example of this. They have a great looking Apple taken from their company logo that has a nice modern feel and is consistent across all of their properties.

Also, when you create your main company image make sure to give it a descriptive label, such as YourCompanyName.png. Do not upload something generic like “small_cropped_profile_image_3456789.png.” The reason is simple: A descriptive label helps your SEO.

Finally, keep in mind that your page backgrounds on platforms like Twitter are a good place to advertise yourself. So, when possible, add links to all of your social profiles in the design.

2. Fill Out all Important Pages

The profile, bio, and about pages are very important from an SEO perspective because that is where search engines pull the meta description that shows up in search results. This is also, usually, the first thing people read when they want to learn more about a company.
Always fill these pages out completely, and make sure that they contain keywords that are relevant to your business. For example, if you’re in interior design, that should be one of the key phrases listed. This will make it easier for people to find you on traditional search engines as well as social search engines.

In addition, double check phone numbers, dates, pricing, and email addresses to make sure they are up-to-date and the same across your various pages. You should also link to your other social profiles from these pages.

3. Gauge Online Engagement

Looking at your engagement on social platforms is a quick way to gauge if you could be doing a better job of interacting with your audience. Make a list of any potential issues you see and set aside some time to figure out how best to address them.
Next, scan your profile walls for engagement opportunities. Did you miss anything worth addressing? If so, take some time to respond, whether it’s directly on the wall or via private message.

Run a search for your company name on social media platforms, major search engines like Google and Bing, and on at least one service like NameChk. You essentially want to look for any red flags and imposters.

Then run a second search for your brand name and words like “love,” and “hate.” This will give you a sense of the kind of pages that come up were a customer or client to do the same kind of search. Also, it will help you see if there are any comments worth addressing. Make a note of any positive or negative issues you want to investigate at a later date. If possible, save those searches or subscribe to them via RSS so you don’t miss anything in the future.

After looking at the engagement on your profiles and mentions of your brand identify, take some time to jot down ideas for addressing them. For example, are there common themes that you could answer with a blog post or campaign?

4. Look Over Internal Accounts

This particular part of the audit could be tricky, depending on how your company is set up. The upside is that once you do this a few times, you will start to develop a process for addressing any issues that come out of the audit.
First off, ensure all login information for company accounts is current and in a secure location accessible to those who need it. It’s a good idea to use the same email address for all social accounts, but use something like social@thecompanyemail.com or yourcompany@gmail.com. That way your social profiles aren’t tied to a single employee and you’ll always have access. I had a client whose marketing manager left on bad terms and no one could access the social accounts. They were all tied to the ex-manager’s personal Gmail account. It took two months to get access and change everything.

Also, review internal policies and guidelines for employee social media usage, and check public employee profiles for compliance. If an employee’s account is set to private, don’t worry about it unless you suspect issues. If it’s been a while since you’ve circulated your policy, send it out, along with a few reminders on how to remain compliant.

Next, review training materials. Double check privacy policies and instructions on how to post to platforms. The reason: you want to make sure that the next time you have a training class you aren’t using outdated information.

This audit outline is by no means complete, it’s a starting place. Each time you go through this process you’re going to discover things you do and don’t want to look at and end up evolving it into something that fits your needs. Just like everything you do in social media, make this your own.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/25/60-minutes-to-a-more-efficient-social-business-strategy/

Lost amid the hysteria over Google‘s powerful new Drive cloud-storage service was another product introduced by the Mountain View tech giant on Tuesday — a Google+ “Share” button.

The new button enables website operators to more easily encourage visitors to spread content among connections on Google’s social network. It’s the latest step in integrating the social network with content across the web. The Share button joins the already existing +1 button, which enables Google+ members to indicate that they — for lack of a better term — like a page or an article.

“When your visitors come across something interesting on your site, sometimes you want to encourage a simple endorsement (like +1),” Google+ product manager Rick Borovoy wrote in a blog post introducing the new feature. “Other times, however, you want to help visitors share with their friends, right away. Today’s new Google+ Share button lets you do just that.”

When visitors click the button, they have the option of sharing a page with specific people or Circles in their network. Like with the +1 feature, the new button switches from red font on a light background to light font on a red background after being clicked. Users can click the button multiple times, however, to share repeatedly or in different contexts with different segments of their network.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/pinterest-video-marketing-tips/

Grant Crowell is a multimedia writer and marketing analyst who’s been covering the online video space since 2006. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him at @grantcrowell.

Since Pinterest was founded in 2008, it’s proven one thing: People love their visuals. And it looks like the site is becoming a hot space for online video marketing opportunities as well, with its recent integration of the Vimeo platform.

The video platform addition makes sense, given how video continues to grow on the network. For example, despite Pinterest’s “no-follow” links rule to third-party sites, videos on the site are being indexed by Google at a rapid rate. In late March, Google had indexed 1,170 Pinterest videos. By mid-April, that figure jumped to 5,870 video results — an increase of more than 500% in just three weeks.

What that should tell brands and marketers is that now is the time to start looking at Pinterest as a video marketing vertical. Here are ten tips on how to get the most out of using video on this site.

1. Customize the Thumbnail Images

Video thumbnails that are nicely photographed and appear to be art directed will blend in much better on Pinterest, and typically draw more attention than a video still frame. However, if you’re not a YouTube Partner, the images you get won’t always look great. Vimeo offers a far better solution where you can upload your own custom thumbnail. This leaves quality control in your hands.

When selecting a thumbnail, find or create an eye-catching image that properly represents your video. If it’s a company product, consider setting it against a white background. If it’s more of an idea, then find a visual that provides a unique way of showcasing your theme. Whatever you do, make sure that your primary visual can clearly be seen at thumbnail size, and is not obscured by the default “play” button.

2. Have Descriptive Video Pins and Pinboards

Pinterest recommends you create at least a few boards that cover a broad range of interests, rather than maintaining a single board devoted to one topic. Yet, some brands make the mistake of placing all of their videos on a single pinboard and non-descriptively titling it, “videos.” Don’t do that. You wouldn’t think of titling a pinboard, “images.”

Instead, look for ways to combine your originally-produced videos with curated videos into pinboards around keyword-rich themes, and place them next to related static images you’ve pinned. For example, a product pin can be strategically placed next to an interesting video showing a lifestyle experience or demo of that product. Merchandising images and video together can prove to be more influential with viewers.

3. Keep Your Videos Short, When Possible

Pinterest is designed for quick browsing and pinning, so you don’t want to make people feel like they’re going to be stuck watching a long video. Naturally, there will be exceptions, as some video themes, like DIYs or demos, may require more time. In either case, make sure to list the length of the video right in the description since viewers are becoming conditioned to seeing that in YouTube and search engine results.

4. Clearly Describe Video Content

Don’t ever leave your description field blank. Describe to people what they can expect to see before they click on the video. Even with an eye-catching thumbnail image, and a relevant subject, people still read the description field of a video to make sure it’s worth their time.

5. Curate Fresh Videos with Fresh Descriptions

Always consider taking the most popular and freshest videos that relate to whatever product, solution, lifestyle, or event you are a part of, and curating them. I recommend creating your own unique title and description instead of duplicating what appears on the original video page, so as not to appear “spammy.”

6. Include “Pin This” Annotations

When you are using your own YouTube videos, Brian Honigman, the digital marketing manager at Marc Ecko Enterprises, suggests including annotations with a call-to-action for your audience. Basically, tell your visitors to “pin this video to Pinterest” or provide a link to your Pinterest profile as a way to connect.

7. Add “Pin Me” Notices in Video Outtros

Of course, you can always feature your own call-to-action in the video content you create. Simply include something like “Follow me at pinterest.com/[pinterest name]” in your video outtros, like the example above. It makes for a great reminder for users to engage with you in another way and in a different community.

8. Put a “Pin It” Button Next to Your Video Player

You likely already know that you can add the Pinterest follow button to your website or blog. You should also have it embedded right under the embedded video player on your website and blog pages. It’s just one more way your visitors can get to key content.

9. Create a Pinterest-Specific Video Campaign

Some brands are now developing video campaigns to encourage users to follow them on Pinterest and pin their items. Take this Pinterest video campaign from a U.K. insurance comparison website. Their Driving in Heels video was part of a contest where users submitted the craziest shoes they have ever worn while operating a car. This turned out to be an effective cross-marketing strategy. It created awareness about a public safety issue (unsafe driving habits), while also generating increased brand awareness through theme-based pinning.

10. Repin Videos by Others

Pinterest’s best brand practices page says “repinning is one of the most social activities on Pinterest and it’s how any user really builds his/her network of followers.” One way to do this with videos is to find influencers in your industry who already have Pinterest profiles, follow them, and include their videos on your own pinboard. Make sure to notify them about it on the comments section of their original pins. Better yet, you can create a custom video that comments on some of the more interesting “Pin-fluencers” in your community. Both of these are acceptable ways of reaching out to thought leaders and brand leaders.

What other online video marketing opportunities are you seeing with Pinterest? Have you used video on Pinterest with a business strategy or an interesting business outcome? Let us know in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/pinterest-video-marketing-tips/

Ever wished that long, scrolling Facebook Timeline was somehow easier to manage — like, say, a Pinterest board?

Brand new Facebook app PinView displays items from your News Feed, Timeline, friends list and multimedia pages as small panels, just like social bookmarking site Pinterest showcases images on Pinboards.

The spiffy app launched Thursday with the mantra, “Browse Facebook like you browse Pinterest.”

Once you download the app, PinView opens up your News Feed in grid format. Buttons on the top right allow you to just view stuff from your Timeline, friends’ profile photos, photos or videos.

PinView’s developers have ambitious goals for how to improve the app with new features — such as the option to save favorite posts. “We are also planning to allow you to sort them based on popularity and other non-realtime properties,” co-developer Thomas Petersen told Mashable.

PinView resembles Friendsheet, a similar app that rolled out in January. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg added his Like to the service in March.

Sites across the web have used the grid-format display in the past, but Pinterest has found major success presenting the design to the masses.

“It’s popular because it allow you to quickly scan lots of pictures; that is the strength of this format,” Thomas says. “It’s not something Pinterest invented, but they found the proper use for it.

“Imagine if you could browse eBay that way.”

What do you think of PinView? Will you try it? Let us know in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2012/04/19/pinview-facebook-pinterest-app/