Pinterest’s browser button is now asking some users to ‘Save,’ not ‘Pin it’

Pinterest, that web and mobile app for saving and sharing Pins of images, videos, articles, and other content, has made a small but telling change to one part of its button. This update is showing up for some users on desktop browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The button has historically appeared with the words “Pin it” in the top left corner of images that people can save to their boards, but in recent weeks that term has been replaced by the more generic “Save” for some users.

Several Twitter users who also use Pinterest have picked up on the change and tweeted about it.

https://twitter.com/chermrand/status/719995550981046274

@Pinterest Have you changed the buttons from Pin it to Save it? If you have, I wish you kept it as Pin it. :(

— Mus (@sgtmus) April 16, 2016

Dear @Pinterest , I really miss the "pin it" button. Not a fan of "save."

— Lori Pierzchala (@l0ripie) May 2, 2016

HAHAHA! I only just noticed @Pinterest changed the "Pin it" label in buttons in Portuguese to "save" because "Pinar" means to have sex

— AnaRodrigues.dev (@ohhelloana) April 17, 2016

A company spokesperson confirmed the experiment.

“We’ve recently been testing ‘save’ in place of ‘pin’ in response to user feedback and to make it more immediately clear to everyone what ‘pin’ means,” the spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. “Additionally, as we grow to be a more international service, ‘save’ translates better than ‘Pin it.'”

Why is this tweak of nomenclature interesting? Because Pinterest, founded in 2010, was one of the first companies to offer a cross-platform tool for saving content to a private place on the Internet. Pocket, currently boasting 22 million users, has also done this for several years, but it has recently seen Facebook and Google double down on their own versions. Facebook’s Save feature, though barely promoted, now has more than 250 million monthly active users. So now Pinterest is retreating from its pin-centric lingo and embracing the more generic “save.”

And indeed, the point about translation is understandable — localization in native languages has been a priority for the San Francisco-based company. Engagement seems to have won out over quirkiness in this case.

In September, Pinterest said it had more than 100 million monthly active users.