This is aimed at making Pinterest the hub for online shopping, with advanced product discovery and matching features that align with user needs and help guide them toward relevant products.

To do that, Pinterest, says the company, wants its users to "be able to shop for any item they see on the platform." And to make it happen, Pinterest must collaborate with third-party partners in order to allow and better support the required tools, processes, and steps necessary to help brands list all their various offerings within Pins.

Along this line, Pinterest has renamed its third party partner program this week, and also added new technology partners to help facilitate this expanded product listing capacity.

Because it's now more than a marketing program, Pinterest is re-naming its "Marketing Partners" program the "Pinterest Partner" program. That covers the various shopping tools and providers it's added, which now will include:

Platform partners like WooCommerce and Square Online Store which enable businesses to create e-commerce sites and experiences
Feed management providers like Feedonomics, Productsup, and GoDataFeed which can help manage and optimize product inventory feeds for businesses taking their product catalogs to Pinterest​
Shoppable experience platforms like Shoppable, MikMak, Jebbit, Drizly, and Basketful which connect products contained within a Pin with retailers able to deliver the orders and facilitate shopping
Tag management providers such as PixelYourSite and Tealium, who can help track closed-loop measurement of online shopping conversions and sales
​Looking at the list above, it's clear that Pinterest Partners' new focus is on shopping, and a suite of tools will be able to assist businesses with connecting directly to the platform, streamlining their product listing and promotional processes. This dovetails with Pinterest's overall efforts toward incorporating more direct-commerce features, such as product catalogs, automatic 'Shop the Look' Pins and the upcoming 'Complete the Look' listings, which will automatically show users additional items to complete an outfit.

Still, in relative terms, of course, Pinterest is a small player in the online commerce space with 291 million active users; but those who come back are increasingly dedicated to it as a discovery platform. Some 57% of weekly Pinners use the app in-store while shopping, and Pinterest must reach out and capitalize on engagement factors such as that to boost performance.

Much like Snapchat, Pinterest will never be able to compete with the big players on scale; but it can still be a highly valuable, viable option for many brands, and attract significant marketing spend, if it can maximize engagement and retention among its existing audience. For marketers, that means that while Pinterest won't give you maximum reach, it might just help you connect with people more willing to part with their cash - which could well be more beneficial overall.

These new partnerships will help Pinterest build on this, and continue its ongoing growth strategy.