Pinterest has partnered with a number of brands and retailers that will start to carry the service's iconic pins on their own Web sites.

Starting Thursday, Pinterest partners such as Target, Zappos, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Disney will greet their digital visitors with pin-boards of sorts that feature a selection of their most desirable wares, according to you and your Pinterest-loving pals.

The traveling pins and custom boards are powered by a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that Pinterest has shared with its partners. The APIs allow partners to show their customers what products the people of Pinterest are pinning most often, giving shoppers a quick way to glimpse the company's most coveted goods. Zappos, for example, has a dedicated Web page showing off its most pinned shoes, boots, clothes, and bags of the day.

People can interact with the embedded pins, meaning they can click on any of the pins they find off Pinterest to add them to their own boards. Eventually, Pinterest will allow partners to showcase more than top pins, which means retailers will have the option of also featuring trending pins for certain keywords, most recent pins, or suggested pins.

The release comes less than a month after 4-year-old Pinterest pinned down $225 million in funding and a valuation of $3.8 billion. The company, which has just started experimenting with advertising, is only expecting to profit in attention from the APIs.

"The benefit for us is exposure on major Web sites (which could help reach new users), bringing more pins into the system and diversifying the interests represented on Pinterest, and increasing engagement,"  .

In other words, Pinterest wants to be top-of-mind for all shoppers during the holiday shopping season.