I’m totally doing the “Happy Dance” in my seat right now because I am so excited.  Wanna know why?  Of course you do!  I just figured out how to make it so I see what my friends and those that I purposely follow on Pinterest are pinning.  It has been months since I have been able to do that.

Do you have the same problem that I had?  Is your Pinterest newsfeed cluttered with “Picked For You” pins and “Promoted Pins”?  For me, it was as if all of my friends, as well as people and boards that I follow, had disappeared from my Pinterest newsfeed.  Frustrating.  Seriously, has your newsfeed been commandeered like mine had been?  If so, I can help you!!!  Ready?  Okay!

First of all, click on the gear-shaped icon on the upper right corner of your Pinterest screen, then “Account Settings”.  I’m showing you my settings, but you may choose to set yours differently.

In the “Personalization” section, I set NO for both options because I do NOT want Pinterest to send me Promoted Pins and recommendations based on my activity.

In this same section, it is probably a good idea to clear your recent searches every so often, as well:

 

Continue to scroll down to “Notifications”, and this is the important part, click on the option to only get notifications from people you follow:

 

 

Finally, make sure that you click on “Save Settings” to make it official.

Now, go back to your newsfeed by clicking on the Pinterest “P” symbol on the left side of the search bar at the top.  At this point, you should only see pins from people that you follow…YAY!!!… although Pinterest still seems to throw in a few promo pins.  I’m assuming that Pinterest must get paid for these.

Another important tip: If you follow several group boards, you will also find that your newsfeed is full of pins from people that you don’t know and you may want to scale back and just follow your favorites.

You can fine tune your newsfeed further by seeing if there are pins that you really aren’t interested in and then click on the bottom portion of the pin -not the pic of the pin itself- where it says who the pinner is and what board it is on.  Take a minute to make sure that that truly is a board that you want to follow.   If not, click on the “Unfollow Board” shape on the upper right hand side.

Something else to keep in mind is that you don’t have to follow every single board when you follow someone.  For example, I know that I will never get a tattoo so if I follow someone who has a board with all of their favorite tattoos, I can click “Unfollow” on that board alone.   On the other hand, I might only like one or two board categories that someone has, so I will choose to only follow those boards.  That is the awesome thing about Pinterest…you get to customize your experience.  Really, how awesome it that?!

So, now I have my old Pinterest back and I couldn’t be happier.  Well, kind of.  It appears that everyone else is probably in the same clogged-up newsfeed situation that I was because, where I used to get hundreds of repins a day, I now get about a 10th of that.  Go figure.  Maybe if I tell two friends, and you tell two friends, who then tell two friends, and so on and so on, and so on… the word will get around and we will all get back to where we used to be on Pinterest:  a place where we can see what our friends and those we follow are pinning.  Are you in with me?

Speaking of being “in” with me…have you checked me out on Pinterest?  If not, you should!

While you are at it, you can check out my boards and follow the ones that you like, or follow them all.  Your Pinterest…your choice!  If you do, you just may be showing up on MY newsfeed, as well.

UPDATE:  Here is some recent correspondence that I had with Pinterest that I thought that you might be interested in reading:

 

 

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