Heads up to all of you influential pinners out there: it turns out that Pinterest has been miscalculating your follower count. In a just-sent email to its most influential users, Pinterest admits that it has a technical problem with the way that it has been calculating your follower count. This has caused it to overstate your number of followers. Quoting from the email:

Most changes are between 1-2%, but we know this is really disappointing news. We want to make sure you know the change in your followers isn’t a reflection of your Pinterest activity or “pinning quality” in any way, and it’s strictly a fix for a long-term problem we’ve been eager to solve.

During our most rapid periods of growth, follower counts could be thrown off due to system-slowness or bugs which miscounted board-followers versus people who chose “Follow All” on profiles. Unfortunately, these problems were particularly prominent for popular Pinners like yourself, who gain followers more quickly than average.

This change hasn’t taken effect yet; while they don’t reference a specific date in the email it sounds like this will be taking place very soon. And while 1-2% doesn’t sound like a lot, note the usage of the word “most”. If your Pinterest account is important to your business, we’d highly recommend taking a look at your account when these changes take place to verify how you’re affected.

The email also mentioned two other changes that will be good news to serious users. You’ll now be able to list your followers chronologically. And there will be a “block” feature implemented in the near future(!)

What do you think? Will these changes impact you?