Pinterest – Why Tell People What Interests You When You Can Show Them?

Social networking and media have been around for some time now. The “top-gun” (now public “top-gun”) has been Facebook. This behemoth of all things social has introduced to us the idea of virtual “friends” as well as other oddities that have crept their way into our everyday lives such as “liking”, “tagging”, and the infamous “poke”.
Then along came Twitter, which took the status update idea of Facebook and ran with it. Now we can know what our friends are doing nearly every second of every day through “tweets”.
However, another way to stay connected without having to come face to face with anyone has come along, and it is definitely making its presence known. It’s called Pinterest, and it is a way of sharing your likes and interests with others not through status updates and pokes, but through something that most everyone in the world can understand: Pictures. Right now it’s still a private club (you have to be invited to join), but there are over 4 million users now on Pinterest so your chances of being a lucky invitee are going up.
Here’s how it works.
Once you’ve been invited to Pinterest, you are asked to set up different “boards” (think of an actual cork-board where you pin your favorite pictures). You can have any kind of topic or category that you want to have, and you can have multiple boards as well. Once you’ve done that… just start looking. The beauty of it is that you can pin and re-pin (think “retweet” which, by the way, is now in the Oxford English Dictionary) different images of things you like that other people happen to like as well.
This is a great site for DIY’ers, cooking and baking lovers, artists, or people who just like to look at pictures. You can find images that are linked to amazing recipes that you can try. It is becoming way too common in my household for us to eat a “Pinterest-meal”. You can also find home decor projects, inspiring images for art and music, and even some goofy stuff.
You can also tweet or post things you’ve pinned to Facebook to cover your bases. One of the most fascinating things about this site is that there really is no cultural or language barrier to worry about. If you see a picture that you like from a guy in Sweeden, you can still re-pin it with no problem.
Pinterest’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting. As humans, one of things we do best is tell people about what we like and love. Why tell them when you can show them? Hope to see you on the pin-boards soon. www.pinterest.com
Contributed by Chris Pennington