"After being released late this summer, Pinterest’s exclusive collage-making platform, Shuffles, has gained a lot of traction on social media. However, once you do get an invite to the app, the community is largely inactive."-- Ava rukavina, 10th grade
If you’re unaware, Shuffles is a mobile app that was launched by Pinterest this past July. You can connect your Pinterest account to Shuffles and create collages using pins you’ve saved. But there’s one aspect that’s been catching people’s attention: it’s not available to the general public. Once you download Shuffles in the app store it’s features aren’t locked behind a paywall or anything like that. To create an account, you need access to a secret passcode, these codes come from existing users who receive, “three to five to share with others upon joining the app. Alternatively, you can join the waitlist on the app to gain access as Pinterest slowly rolls it out to the masses,” Victoria Messina writes in her article, What to Know About Shuffles, Pinterest’s New Invite-Only Collage-Making App.
This exclusive app has gained some attention on other social media platforms, most notably Tiktok, with the hashtag #Shufflescode and #Pinterestshuffles gaining several millions of views since its release. The virality of this platform might be due, in part, to its limited availability. However it seems that this wasn’t Pinterest’s motivation for limiting access to the app. On their Instagram, Pinterest explained that the waitlist was an attempt to prevent the platform from crashing, “We’re letting people in gradually so things don’t break. We’ll get you all Shuffling as soon as we can!”
Executives from Pinterest provide their insight, “TwoTwenty is an innovation lab, so we always are working on a variety of projects at one time. Shuffles has been one of them for months and months [...] When you are releasing a new app from a big company like Pinterest, who has never released a new app before, you want to make sure you do it in an intentional, protected way -- a way that allows you to learn as you go and help support the people who use the app. That was our primary focus with this release.” says Meredith Arthur, the content lead on TwoTwenty, Pinterest’s new incubator team, responsible for the creation of Shuffles.
Whether it was the intention of Pinterest or not, there’s a lot of excitement around obtaining a code. Declan McMahon, an OSA student, and the wonderful person who invited me to the app, said they “had to scour the internet for one and a half hours for it,” He isn’t alone in this either, there are entire Reddit threads dedicated to sharing Shuffles codes.
After downloading the app myself, I was shocked to find that, despite the high demand for an invite code and all the attention surrounding the app, there is very little activity within the actual platform itself. On the trending pages of most social media sites, you’ll see content with hundreds of thousands or even millions of likes, whereas when you’re scrolling through your Shuffles feed, and look under the ‘Popular’ tab, you won’t see collages with more than a few hundred likes.
It was released just a couple months ago, sure, but why does it seem as if more Tik Tok users are talking about Shuffles than people who are actually on Shuffles? There’s currently no data available about how many have downloaded the application, but it has thousands of ratings, is ranked #115 in Lifestyle on the App Store, and won the editors choice award. Based on this information, one would assume it has hundreds of thousands of users interacting with each other.
It’s not like the platform is completely void of content though. Popular hashtags like, #gilmoregirls, #harrystyles, #aesthetic, #moodboard, and #folklore have thousands of collages under them. The creators of these collages have been able to find community with other Shuffles users.
Perhaps this feeling of isolation on the app is due to the fact that I’m not exactly a Shuffles celebrity. Shuffles user @thelittlefreaks, who currently has over 400 followers, describes their experience: “My collages vary quite a bit depending on likes, my aesthetic vibe collages usually get 80-100, however my abstract pieces can get around 200-300.” @thelittlefreaks has also been lucky in finding others who share their interests, “A lot of other shuffles inspire me [...] My favorite part of this app is definitely exploring other people's collages as I love seeing different interpretations of what I love!”
The app hasn’t really had enough time to expand enough so that everyone is able to find others with common interests. But learning that some people have found others who appreciate their niches provides some hope. With luck, as people continue to create collages and the community expands, people will more easily be able to find others that enjoy their niche fascinations.
This exclusive app has gained some attention on other social media platforms, most notably Tiktok, with the hashtag #Shufflescode and #Pinterestshuffles gaining several millions of views since its release. The virality of this platform might be due, in part, to its limited availability. However it seems that this wasn’t Pinterest’s motivation for limiting access to the app. On their Instagram, Pinterest explained that the waitlist was an attempt to prevent the platform from crashing, “We’re letting people in gradually so things don’t break. We’ll get you all Shuffling as soon as we can!”
Executives from Pinterest provide their insight, “TwoTwenty is an innovation lab, so we always are working on a variety of projects at one time. Shuffles has been one of them for months and months [...] When you are releasing a new app from a big company like Pinterest, who has never released a new app before, you want to make sure you do it in an intentional, protected way -- a way that allows you to learn as you go and help support the people who use the app. That was our primary focus with this release.” says Meredith Arthur, the content lead on TwoTwenty, Pinterest’s new incubator team, responsible for the creation of Shuffles.
Whether it was the intention of Pinterest or not, there’s a lot of excitement around obtaining a code. Declan McMahon, an OSA student, and the wonderful person who invited me to the app, said they “had to scour the internet for one and a half hours for it,” He isn’t alone in this either, there are entire Reddit threads dedicated to sharing Shuffles codes.
After downloading the app myself, I was shocked to find that, despite the high demand for an invite code and all the attention surrounding the app, there is very little activity within the actual platform itself. On the trending pages of most social media sites, you’ll see content with hundreds of thousands or even millions of likes, whereas when you’re scrolling through your Shuffles feed, and look under the ‘Popular’ tab, you won’t see collages with more than a few hundred likes.
It was released just a couple months ago, sure, but why does it seem as if more Tik Tok users are talking about Shuffles than people who are actually on Shuffles? There’s currently no data available about how many have downloaded the application, but it has thousands of ratings, is ranked #115 in Lifestyle on the App Store, and won the editors choice award. Based on this information, one would assume it has hundreds of thousands of users interacting with each other.
It’s not like the platform is completely void of content though. Popular hashtags like, #gilmoregirls, #harrystyles, #aesthetic, #moodboard, and #folklore have thousands of collages under them. The creators of these collages have been able to find community with other Shuffles users.
Perhaps this feeling of isolation on the app is due to the fact that I’m not exactly a Shuffles celebrity. Shuffles user @thelittlefreaks, who currently has over 400 followers, describes their experience: “My collages vary quite a bit depending on likes, my aesthetic vibe collages usually get 80-100, however my abstract pieces can get around 200-300.” @thelittlefreaks has also been lucky in finding others who share their interests, “A lot of other shuffles inspire me [...] My favorite part of this app is definitely exploring other people's collages as I love seeing different interpretations of what I love!”
The app hasn’t really had enough time to expand enough so that everyone is able to find others with common interests. But learning that some people have found others who appreciate their niches provides some hope. With luck, as people continue to create collages and the community expands, people will more easily be able to find others that enjoy their niche fascinations.
