For every fast growing company it is advised to revise its terms of service and policies so it will reflect better the company’s vision and defend itself against potential legal accusation. It is even more important for a social networking company where the content is very dynamic and not always under full control of the company.

Following this logic, Pinterest which is probably the fastest growing web company these days, has just renovated its terms. It announced the update on the company’s official blog and also it sent a notification to all of its users via email. Here’s a screenshot of the email’s notification beginning:

So what has changed? In general, now Pinterest’s terms are a little more specific and clear than before, where they were in some cases even pretty vague. For example, section number 7 which refers the the social network’s mobile software is much more detailed and comprehensive. Let’s dig in a little more deeper:

Pinterest Not Allowed To Sell The User Contents

The biggest change in Pinterest’s terms is that now the company has “renounced” its right to the sell the user’s contents, while according to the prior terms it had the right to do so, even though Pinterest are stating that they never had any intention to sell contents uploaded by the users.

This change was pretty necessary after the old terms already caused Pinterest some issues with other websites and photo sharing services which were even deterred by this option. Few services, such as Flickr, even blocked some of their site’s pages completely from pinning because these kind of terms.

More Prominent Changes

Pinterest also added to the service’s use policy more clarified terms about prohibited activities regarding to encourage self-harm or self-abuse. Pinterest also stating they have added simpler copyright or trademark infringements reporting tools, however, the tools I have found in the Copyright & Trademark section were similar to how they were before (which are/were friendly to use).

The final interesting thing in Pinterest statement is that they made some interface changes (“we added language”) which will allow the service to launch soon private Pinboards and an API that will offer more ways to integrate the service’s contents on other websites.

Overall the revised Pinterest’s terms are showing that the company is also maturing from the corporate aspect and not only in terms of popularity. The new terms will go into effect on April 6th.