Social bookmarking site Pinterest has been slowly doling out APIs to get developers onto its platform, such as its Marketing Developer Partners API that was launched last week to give businesses more control over their advertising campaigns on the site. Now, Pinterest is opening up access to the site’s data more than ever with the new Pinterest Developers Platform.

“On Pinterest, people have saved over 50 billion Pins,” Pinterest said in a statement. “As a developer, you’ll have the chance to build something that makes those Pins a reality, like apps for ordering ingredients from a recipe Pin or booking trips based on travel Pins.”

Developers interested in participating in Pinterest’s new developer program can apply for beta access by submitting information about their company, as well as a description of what their app does and how it helps Pinterest’s users.

Avoiding Twitter’s mistakes

Pinterest is not unlocking the gates for just anyone. The new platform, which is currently in beta testing, will use a whitelist approach and will only allow approved developers to have access. There appear to be no development partners at launch, and Pinterest will be adding them as they are approved.

“Honestly, it has a lot to do with finding the right set of values, finding the right value exchange for everyone involved,” Josh Inkenbrandt, Pinterest’s developer platform lead, told TechCrunch. “When I joined Pinterest a little over three years ago, I think the mindset generally about platforms were, you literally just open up your APIs; you allow developers access to everything. And the learnings over the past three years have shown, while that might be good in the short term, it affects your platform in the long term if you have to close those things down, and in some cases it hurts the relationships with developers.”

Inkenbrandt is likely referring to the drama surrounding Twitter Inc, which recently invalidated entire companies when it decided to suddenly cut off access to its data firehose earlier last month. Twitter has been desperately trying to monetize its service, and the social media company seems to have suddenly realized that user data is its primary resource.

Image credit: Pinterest (c)