Pinterest is turning its focus on France. Although Pinterest has been available to the French since last year, the user experience has basically been the same as any other user’s experience in the U.S., U.K., or elsewhere. Today, Pinterest is announcing a new, localized version of the service which will cater to French users.

French Pinterest users will start to see more local content when they search or browse categories. More pins will link to French sites and they’ll also see more pin descriptions in French.

“We hope today’s updates will help French pinners discover more relevant pins, and faster than ever before. We’re so excited to offer a tailored experience for our French community and we definitely couldn’t have done it without help from native French pinners,” says Pinterest.

French users should see the new local focus on the web and on the Pinterest mobile apps.

Of course, international expansion is key for Pinterest’s continued growth and eventual monetization. Pinterest is available in a few non-English languages – German, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. But tailoring content to a specific international audience is something new (they did something like this in the U.K. last year) – and something that we may seen Pinterest do more of in the future.

This feature could be especially useful to high-volume pinners who use their Pinterest account as a sort of depository for everything they want to do, eat, read, watch, buy, etc. in the near future.

“When you type a word into the search bar – like San Francisco, beaches or BBQ – you can filter results by clicking “Just my pins”. We’ll show you everything you’ve pinned with that keyword in the pin description. Be sure to add words in your descriptions that will help you find that pin again,” says Pinterest Software Engineer Hui Xu.

So, not only is Pinterest making it easier to find previous pins, but they’re suggesting that you do some better tagging. If you’re looking to use Pinterest as a recipe book, wish list, or other personal catalog, things have just gotten a lot easier.

Pinterest says that they are currently rolling this out on the web, and it should also appear on mobile soon.

Pinterest has explicitly banned sexual content, nudity, and even partial nudity. It’s right there in the Acceptable Use Policy. “You agree not to post User Content that is sexually explicit or contains nudity, partial nudity or pornography.” If you search a term like “sex” or “nude” on Pinterest, you’re greeted with this message:

Reminder: Pinterest does not allow nudity. Pinning or repinning photographs displaying breasts, buttocks or genitalia may result in the termination of your Pinterest account.

Though that sounds pretty straightforward, well, it’s not. Sure, Pinterest says that they do not allow nudity or pornography. Yet there’s plenty of porn and more “tasteful” nudity on Pinterest. See? See? (NSFW, obviously).

Now, it looks like Pinterest is taking a proactive step (at the behest of users) to make sure that the nudity that exists on the site is an acceptable type of nudity – artistic nudity.

“Pinterest is about expressing your passions and people are passionate about art and that may include nudes,” Pinterest told the Financial Times. “So we’re going to try to accommodate that.”

Gizmodo received another quote from Pinterest spokesman Barry Schnitt.

“Pinners have asked us for a policy on nudity that makes a distinction between works of art and things like pornography. A change like that poses a lot of questions. We’re working our way through those questions but we don’t have any additional details to offer just yet.”

It sounds like Pinterest wants to avoid the mess that Facebook’s gotten in as of late. Mainly, the banning of not only art featuring exposed breasts, breastfeeding photos, and cartoon boobs, but even photos that resemble breasts but turn out to be completely innocuous.

Pinterest has to face it: Their UI is great for art and photos. And if the people want tasteful nudes, well, the people should get tasteful nudes. Lest they run off to a place where it won’t be persecuted. Not that Pinterest has done a great job of enforcing their policy up until this point anyway. Moving forward, Pinterest is probably going to have a problem making that distinction between artistic nudity and porny nudity. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

According to Yahoo search data, queries for “hummingbird feeders” have spiked over 400% on Yahoo this week. Searches for bird feeders in general have spiked 35%, and searches for “what to feed hummingbirds” are up as well.

If you like to throw back a bottle or two of beer or liquor from time to time, you might be happy to know that you’re sitting on some potentially wonderful bases for hummingbird feeders as well. Pinterest and Etsy, not to mention other craft-oriented sites have all kinds of ideas for hummingbird feeder designs, and many of them start with bottles.

A quick search on Pinterest for “hummingbird feeders” will unearth a lot of interesting ideas, including some of the designs below.

DeeLuxDesigns (Etsy)

DeeLuxDesigns (Etsy)

Ground Beef Budget

Pinterest

Pinterest

DeeLuxDesigns (Etsy)

MadInCrafts

SimplyGlass (Etsy)

SimplyGlass (Etsy)

Just remember, you’re not feeding the birds the booze.

[via Pinterest]

For example, if you see some cookies that you are interested in trying to bake, you might be able to see the recipe. If someone posts an interesting movie-related pin, you might be able to see a review.

The company has partnered with a bunch of sites, which will provide this information. There are three types of pins, which will take advantage.

There are product pins for things like clothing and furniture, which include pricing, availability, and where to buy the item. This info is updated on a daily basis. The initial partners for this category include: Anthropologie, Asos, BHLDN, eBay, Etsy, Free People, Home Depot, Modcloth, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Overstock, REI, Sephora, Shopify shops, Shop Terrain, Sony, Target, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Wayfair, and Zulily.

Next are recipe pins, which include cook times, ingredients and servings. Initial partners for these are: 101 Cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit, Chobani, Country Living, Delish, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Leite’s Culinaria, Martha Stewart Living, MyRecipes, Naturally Ella, Nestlé Very Best Baking, Real Simple, Simply Recipes, Skinny Taste, The Girl Who Ate Everything, The Kitchn,What’s Gaby Cooking, Whole Foods Market and Woman’s Day.

Finally, there are movie pins, which include content ratings, cast members, etc. Info comes from Flixster, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes.

The new pins are only available in the new Pinterest design.

If you think your site has something to contribute in the way that all of these sites do, you can learn more about rich pins and making your own site’s Pinterest experience better here.

In addition to the new types of pins, Pinterest has finally made the ‘Pin It’ button available to mobile apps. You can see it in action in apps from Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face and Zulily.

Today, Pinterest alleviates this annoyance with the new send button. You can now send pins directly to your friends and family on both mobile and the web, as long as you both follow each other on the network.

“Just tap Send from either web or mobile to send a pin. You can send pins to fellow pinners (if you both follow each other), Facebook friends, or email contacts. We’ll show you the most recent people you’ve sent pins to for easy access,” says Pinterest. “You can even include a message to give it a more personal touch!”

When you send a pin to another user, they’ll be notified. If they make an action on that pin, including commenting, liking, or repinning, you’ll see that in your notifications as well. It’s a nice little fix to a previously irksome issue.

According to Pinterest, users should start to see the new send option rollout over the next few weeks.

Speaking of notifications, Pinterest finally added them to the mobile experience (both the iOS and Android apps). That update, which launched earlier this week, also brought mentions and improved search to both apps.

Today, Pinterest is taking steps to make the mobile experience better with updates to their iOS and Android apps. Pinterest for iOS v 2.4 and Pinterest for Android v 1.5 are now available.

First up, Pinterest is unveiling new search suggestions inside the app.

“We’ll now suggest search terms as you type on mobile. You can also see recent searches you made from other places, so if you searched for a soup recipe from your computer, you can do the same search when you’re at the grocery store with just your phone to help you. It’s easy to delete these searches from your settings if you want to,” says Pinterest.

As you can see, searching for something like “apple” now yields suggestions for apple-related content. This also works with user search. It’s a small, but useful improvement.

The other additions to come along with today’s update are a long time coming, quite frankly. With the new versions, you can now @ mention other users. Both iOS and Android users can now get notifications as well.

“Now you can see who commented on your pin or mentioned you whenever you have your phone handy. And if you can’t get enough, we’re also introducing push notifications so you can find out what’s happening without even opening the Pinterest app,” says Pinterest.

The iOS update also brings a couple of new features, including the ability to “pin from more places more easily from the web.” This amounts to a prominent “+” button on the homescreen that lets you enter in the url of the item you wish to pin. Not quite as easy as with the desktop version of Pinterest, with that handy pin button, but it does help. iOS users can also now invite friends to group boards from the app.

“As we’ve rolled out our new look, we’ve heard from our community about things they love, things they miss, and things that could make Pinterest even better,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “Thanks to the feedback, we’ve made some changes. The most significant changes are a new notifications system that keeps you up on all of the activity around your account, as well a typeahead to offer suggestions while you search.”

After you pin something, you can check out related boards or go straight to your pin by clicking “See it Now”.

For those who missed the “via” feature, Pinterest has added a way to see who things were pinned from when you click on a pin.

You can also now mention friends in pin descriptions and comments using an “@” before their name.

The “Find Friends” feature lets you see which of your Facebook and Twitter friends are on Pinterest.

Pinterest has added more notifications, with “Recent Activity” located in the upper right hand corner, and notifications for when someone follows you or your boards; repins, likes or comments on pins, and mentions. Old notifications will also be there for future reference.

There’s also an improved search functionality, with search suggestions as you type.

Soon, Pinterest says it will start letting you know when new pins have been added to your home feed. They’re also thinking about adding the ability to rearrange your pins, search for your pins, and to create a board within a board. These would likely be welcome features.

Also in the cards is the ability to know when you’ve already pinned something to prevent duplicates.

They’re still rolling out the new design.

Nook announced today that Pinterest is now available on Nook HD, Nook HD+, Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices. The app is available from the Nook store, but it will also come preloaded with any new Nook device sold.

“Pinterest has long been one of our most requested apps and we are thrilled to bring it to Nook, along with the Twitter and Facebook for NOOK apps,” said Claudia Romanini, Vice President of Nook Apps, Nook Media LLC. “Our goal is to bring Nook users the very best in social media and these apps will bring to life the rich sharing experiences that Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter offer.”

Alongside Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter will also come preloaded on all new Nook devices. The Facebook app received an update that overhauls the experience to mimic what users expect out of a Facebook app on other mobile devices. With the new app, users can “see what their friends are up to, share updates, photos and videos, chat and have group conversations, play games and much more.”

The addition of Pinterest is just the latest move from Nook to make its platform more desirable to consumers. It recently launched Nook Press, a new version of Barnes & Noble’s popular PubIt! platform that allows independent authors to self-publish their titles on Nook. If it takes off, we could see Nook devices starting to sell well again as people clamor for exclusive content from up-and-coming authors.

You don’t have to install the “Pin It” bookmarklet on your browser, though if you’re the type to pin stuff you find from image search results to Pinterest, I’d say there’s a good chance you already have it installed anyway.

Bing links to and gives proper attribution to the original content, it says, so image owners should be happy that Pinterest users will be sent to their images rather than just to Bing.

“Last fall, we hosted a group of lifestyle and design bloggers at the Bing headquarters to better understand their search and social media habits,” writes Bing program manager Chen Fang. “What we discovered is a community that does more than its fair share of image searches, with much of it tied to Pinterest. They shared some of the hassles they face, and that finding efficient ways to hunt down original, high-resolution images and filtering image results were some of their pain points.”

That’s why Bing has launched the “Pin to Pinterest” feature, Fang says.

Those who follow the search industry know that Bing prides itself on its social features that are lacking from Google, so this is really just the latest extension of that.