The Addiction to Pinterest

Social networking has allowed us to find old friends, post photos, publish links and connect with new acquaintances who share our interests.

Now there is an option of "pinning" our interests with our online pals. Pinterest was created just to connect people with "things" that they find interesting. The idea sounds a little vague and upon trying Pinterest.com myself I found the site to have a lot of photos. So the questions is: What do we do with Pinterest?

Pinterest is a mishmash of pictures in the broadest terms. There are photos of celebrities, models, makeup tips, underwear models, clever quotes, children's clothing, children's homemade toys, home decorating, home organization, teaching tools, neat things found for sale on other websites and food recipes on other web addresses as well.

If none of these "things" are of any interest to you then it's not really worth the time to set an account up. I hear many female users calling the site "addictive" but without a clear usefulness for my own means, it is hard to become as enthralled as so many users do. I personally like the photography on Pinterest and users have told me that they collect these images for further use in work projects because of their ability to share without infringing on any copyright laws. I understand using Pinterest on an as-needed basis for anything that requires a visual resource for inspiration or enhancement.

Other uses for Pinterest are gathering images for organizing the home and creating your own household items such as cleaners or photo frames. Some users like being able to share items that are simply interesting and, therefore, doing exactly as Pinterest creators intended; connect to other users who also find the images interesting. If you have a lot of money to buy and make these things that are shared on Pinterest (or just dream that you can) then this site will be a lot of fun for you.

If you think this sounds a lot like Tumblr, you're right. While Tumblr is a blogging client that allows users to share images, links and text that others can follow, Pinterest is strictly for images and video. This means that if the image requires text or a link, that is a separate entity. For example, a photo of a lasagne requires the user to go to a website for instructions on how to make it. On Tumblr, in contrast, the recipe instructions as well as the link where the recipe was taken can be posted in the same entry.

If you post an image that you found on the internet you can with just copy and paste the URL and share it on Pinterest or you must save it to your computer's hard drive and then upload it to Pinterest. It is easier to just share what other people create and what other people have already shared. In a sense should be a quick way to bookmark and look up images that are of specific topics that you find interesting. Instead of using services such as Diigo or Delicious to bookmark the web address where the image was first found. Plus the site is web based so it is accessible while a user is away from home. There are mobile apps for iPhone and Android so phones and tablets also allow users to log in to their account. They can access their pins and search for other images that they want to use or re-pin on the go.

Having the accessible videos is fine since many of them are on Youtube originally. There are a lot of how-to videos shared which Pinterest users seem to find very handy. I’ve noticed a lot of beauty and hair videos that are taken from Youtube and posted to Pinterest and shared. Pinterest is a quicker and easily accessible way of discovering items but for your own research purposes the original source is going to be your best bet. If you want to learn how to make a French twist you now can find numerous videos and webpage explanations on how to make this hairstyle from a simple Google search. But Pinterest users are coming across new ideas that they hadn’t originally heard of previously and saving the resources in their folders to keep for a later date.

Pinterest's popularity is rapidly growing. Tumblr is an established site that has been grabbing users as an extended Twitter of sorts. Pinterest is very focused on visual social networking. Etsy users are particularly interested because it means sharing such handmade items without the salesman element. Others users like simply to collect images and share interests.
I do recommend those who are visually inclined to create an account and take a look around. These is a lot to look through so "pin" away!