Pinterest now lets you select a pin for a board cover, but private boards still elusive

Pinterest. Love it or hate it, the site draws a ridiculous amount of traffic and it’s taken off in a huge way. There have been some bumps in the road, and the company is trying to address those. Today, in a blog post, Pinterest details how users will now be able to select a single image to represent each of their boards.

So now, as you’re browsing around in your own boards, or even on the boards of someone else, you can set a specific pin to be your board cover of choice. Collaborative boards, however, have a bit of a different rule:

“Covers on collaborative boards can only be selected by the Pinner who created the board. Other than that, you can choose new covers as often as you’d like, so we hope you’ll have fun customizing the look of your boards and profile.”

What’s interesting, however, is the very loud group of commenters who are asking for private boards. It seems that there are a number of reasons that users want them, and the feedback is overwhelmingly clear. In fact, most users even seem to understand the fine line that Pinterest has to walk when it comes to private content, as commenter Lori Fredericks notes:

“Can we pretty please get the option to make at least a couple of private boards? Not all, I understand for the purpose of having quality and quantity of content on the site that we don’t want people to go 100% private and not be actively sharing their pins…there are definitely reasons to allow us 2-3 boards (or even ONE at least that only *you* can see!) that are private to the world. C’mon guys! :)”

So, Pinners, if you were hoping for private boards in today’s Instagram announcement, you’re going to be disappointed. But at least it appears that the company is listening and that’s a good sign for getting features down the road.

Think pinning can’t be serious business? You might be surprised.