Women, it has long been claimed, are natural gatherers - and if the recent success of Pinterest among my female friends is anything to go by, there may just be something in that theory. In fact, if anything can explain our sudden bizarre obsession with picking out pretty stuff on the internet and 'pinning' it on to a virtual board, I'm happy to go along with it, because I'd love to know why this strange activity has now taken over my life!
So what is Pinterest? In the site's own words: "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes." That doesn't quite explain why a friend of mine immediately created a board called "dickheads" on joining, but the point is you can use the site to present any kind of found, internet-based information graphically, And the site does this very well.
It's also dead easy to 'pin' any beautiful thing you might find on your online travels, as you can install a widget that sits on your browser, making the whole process a swift two-click process. Once you've got going, you'll soon find that other users respond by liking or re-pinning your items, which creates an instant sense of community along with people who share your interests.
So, you get it: pinning just another form of photoblogging. So what makes it any better than Tumblr or any of the other graphical blogging sites? First, I'd say Pinterest is simpler and quicker to use, as described above. But more importantly it makes it a lot easier to categorise things, thanks to its use of mood boards.
In Pinterest, you can assign every item to a mood board curated by you, and keep as many boards going as you like. Tumblr uses tags which is not as visually straightforward, and can get messy. It also allows you to follow individual boards rather than people, so if you love your best mate's shoe collection but are a bit bored of her cat photos, you can opt out of the kitty stuff while continuing to enjoy the footwear.
So, are you ready to start pinning? Pinterest is still subscription only but if you'd like an invite, please feel free to leave a comment below, and we'll see what we can do to help...
