Pinterest has announced that you can now message other pinners on Pinterest.  However, unlike most messaging services, these messages revolve around pins rather than around users.

The messaging component of Pinterest was only a few months in the making and it has been tested internally with employees and with “power pinners” to ensure it was working well.

The service is not like a traditional messaging service like you see on Facebook.  You do not have a contact list of people you chat with – although I could see this changing in the future based on pinner feedback.

When users choose to Send a Pin, they are shown a list of contacts to choose from. Once that Pin is sent, the conversation appears in the lower left-hand corner of the website or tablet app. (Mobile users will be treated to an entirely separate dialogue screen for messages.)

The avatars of users that you’ve exchanged messages with look kind of like Facebook’s “chat heads,” and conversations can be selected by clicking on them. They can be just as easily shut down by clicking the “x” in the corner of each. On the website, avatars and conversations only partially cover the frames behind them, allowing Pinners to scroll through and still see the content shared in their global feed.

With spam pins being an issue on Pinterest, it will be interesting to see how Pinterest tends to address this.  Many spammers will pin popular pins – especially ones that are small enough that users need to click them to see them in full size, but the link actually takes users to a spam page, such as an affiliate link or redirect, in order to market off those pinners.

Here is the new messaging feature in action.