Pinterest Fails: Where's My Analytics Tool?

In the previous class, I found myself falling more and more in love with all things analytics. For several projects, we used all kinds of analytics tools that put numbers into formats that even I could understand. I looked at my personal fitness data, which after a little CSV sorting, revealed more patterns and details than I could ever even consider. For our LMS, I pulled, and sorted, and analyzed with ease. And for my Instagram and Facebook analytics, it was a matter of click here, login there, and like magic, my life in pictures and statuses unfolded before me. So when this week's knowledge tracking assignment came around, I thought: smooth sailing. 

Alas, I was wrong. Let me start at the beginning. I've used Pinterest for several years now. At last count, I had 1679 pins. About one-third of them fall under my "Veg Life" board, which is all vegetarian and vegan recipes that I've convinced myself I will make... soon. And the other two-thirds fall neatly into categories like "Finding Inspiration," "Namaste," "Green Cleaners," and my latest addition, "Learning and Designing." Because I'm so familiar with Pinterest, and because I didn't use it for anything the previous class, I thought it would be a great option for this assignment. 

I even had a hypothesis that my older boards and pins would get more traffic than the new education board because of the networks I belong to and the followers I have. So I started the learning and designing board and began promoting it, first to friends on Facebook, then across Twitter to gain some followers from our class. Everything seemed to be going along smoothly. I was getting my notifications that things were being pinned and that I had three new followers to that board. Cool, I thought, I'm going to run all the numbers on Friday, since I'll be flying back to Orlando on Sunday, and put together my presentation. However, I made a mistake. I thought getting Pinterest analytics would be as simple as clicking a button, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

Last night, as I sat in a hotel room in Alta, Utah, with a mild case of altitude sickness, I logged in to my beloved Pinterest to gain some insights in perfectly graphed squares. I had read about the analytics dashboard when it first came out, and I know it's visually appealing and easy to read. Yet, something was wrong. 

Where was the analytics button? Search, search, read, read. Okay, I need a business account. Well, that seems a bit odd, but alright, I'll convert to a business account. Hmm, that's weird. Where are the numbers? Search again. It can take up to 36 hours to analyze your data. WHAT? Why? All those other tools did it in less than five minutes. Back I go: Google, Pinterest Fails Analytics Tools.