Haha it definitely isn't my favorite platform in the world but for business owners, it's generally looked at more as a visual search engine rather than a social media platform. When people go to Pinterest, they often do it with the intention of either wanting to learn something or wanting to buy something. A lot of people use Pinterest to get inspiration for things, which from a business standpoint, is the perfect opportunity to promote products they're searching for.
I design and sell digital products. Planners, journals, things of that nature. 😊 I also make a lot of handmade things.
Haha yeah it's definitely not perfect. I think the ones who reap the most benefits from Pinterest are bloggers, who promote their products in their blog posts. Another thing is that I think about 80%ish of their traffic comes from Google. If there was some kind of Federated alternative, ideally, Google wouldn't be involved in being responsible for the success of it. I'd love to see someone try to make something better than Pinterest though. More federation options for small business would be amazing so we have a place to survive outside of big tech. Flohmarkt is looking to be a good solution to that though! Just gotta get some servers up in Canada 😄