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Pinterest Grid-Design Is The 'New' NewsFeed

Derek Andersen 2012-01-24T13:05:36+00:00

Get used to it: Pinterest's grid-based web design is the new NewsFeed. Do you remember when news feeds didn't exist a few years ago? Think really hard and you will. Every app I've worked on in the past 12 months (6 total) has had a news feed. It's a feature that most entrepreneurs/clients can't live without. At one point a few years ago it was extremely innovative. Now it's an eyesore.

The brief NewsFeed history: FriendFeed allowed you to aggregate all your friends activity across a dozen sites into one scrolling feed. Facebook acquired the team behind it and they built FB's feed into what it is today - basically the only reason to go back everyday unless you're single and creeping.  Twitter originally sent SMS messages for every tweet I received, but after getting about 20 from TechCrunch one night in 2008 I stopped using Twitter for eight months. The SMS messages turned into so much content that a feed was the only thing to keep it in check.

Pinterest's greatest accomplishment is unlocking a new format for absorbing massive amounts of content in an extremely appealing way. They certainly had a lot of help from Tumblr, and I plan to talk to Ben Silbermann at our event next month about where it really came from.

But this style is being adopted by several notable products and we should just plan to see it emerge as the 'new' NewsFeed. I for one don't feel like people are 'ripping off' their design as some suggest, anymore than Facebook ripped off 'profiles' from MySpace or Friendster, or Pinterest ripped off Tumblr for that matter. It's just the evolution of web products and I am excited to see something different (read: less news feeds). So if you're building a news feed into your product....STOP! Or at least consider doing something that's  more innovative and less predictable. Here are a couple of products that are integrating this type of grid-design. We'll probably see another 20 for different vertical in the next six months:

Chill - This product has evolved (again) to become the Pinterest for watching video.

 Google Places - They have created an anti-Yelp to make consuming business listings bearable.

Commonred - Relaunching this week, it will transform from a networking app to a discovery engine for finding the geniuses behind amazing professional projects.

 

About the Author

Derek Andersen

For the past 15 years Derek has been building communities. He is the co-founder/CEO of Bevy, a SaaS product that helps companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Google, Snowflake, and Adobe build virtual and in-person communities. Bevy has raised $60M from Accel, Upfront Ventures, and others. He co-founded Startup Grind, a community of 600 Chapters in 125 countries educating, inspiring, and connecting startup people. Since 2012 Startup Grind has hosted 20,000 events. In 2010 he co-founded Commonred which was acquired by Income.com. Derek also previously worked as a product manager at Electronic Arts. He currently lives in Palo Alto CA with his wife and four children.