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| Image: Wikipedia Commons |
Do you pin?
Are you a pinner?
Do you find things Pinteresting?
Or do Pinterest and the terms above make you want to gag?
I'm not sure where I sit at the moment.
I've recently joined Pinterest, thanks to a kind invite from ChildLedChaos on Twitter, after I tweeted my incredulousness at the "request an invite" hurdle to joining.
I joined because I am curious - much as I was when I joined Twitter. I couldn't quite see what the fuss was about, but so many love it, there must be something to it.
Pinterest has been around for awhile, but right now it seems to be at the tipping point towards global explosion. And from what little I had seen of it, I sort of wondered, "Why?"
Compilations of pretty pictures of frothy dresses, teacups and white chairs?
So?
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| Image by Jepoycamboy via Flickr CC |
Then suddenly one day last week, I kind of started to get it. I noticed three things:
(1) Pinterest retains image credits when you pin an image. That makes a great way to store images you come across that you might want to use later. Until now, I had been storing copies and laboriously copy-pasting the site for image credit onto a Word doc.
(2) That reminded me of the couple of Word docs I have with images stored on them for other purposes - such as the one with hairstyles I know would work on my hair, for future hairdressing visits. I've now converted that into a Pinterest board (don't judge OK - yes Meg Ryan is there but so is Alexa Chung; wavy hair admits all comers)
(3) Most interestingly, to me, because this hints at future evolutions of the site: this:
I'm participating in Homedad75's Fiction Fridays meme. ChildLedChaos has created a Fiction Fridays Pinterest board updated with all the new images posted on blogs each Friday. So this is another way to link bloggers and showcase a meme and promote the blogs participating - clever.
From my limited exposure it seems to me most people using Pinterest are using it for "inspiration boards". This might be things they like, home decor ideas, images that inspire them, or similar.
Here are some of the ways different bloggers use Pinterest:
- Andrea from Fox in Flats uses hers to showcase and organise style themes she blogs about.
- Vanessa from Blog Learnings used one to give her web designer to show her what style she wanted when re-designing her blog.
- Melissa from The Things I'd Tell You creates boards of beautiful images around different themes and things she likes
- some use Pinterest images as sources of inspiration for blog posts
- NEW! added 2 March: check out this post on Pinterest at Ramblings of a WAHM - lots of ideas for how to use Pinterest and how it can support your blogging - with links to info and other people's posts on how they use it. Is EVERYONE talking about Pinterest right now or what! TIPPING POINT
Right now it seems that Pinterest is about to explode - and as that happens, people are going to use it in all sorts of inventive and interesting ways.
Are you into Pinterest?
What do you like about it?
Thanks for including me in this Jackie. It really does make it easier to get inspiration and ideas together! x Andrea
ReplyDeleteThanks Andrea - your Pinterest boards are a great compliment to your blog.
DeleteI know that Sapphire uses it and loves it (as an inspiration board, as you say above) but it does intrigue me if it holds the website credits of the images. That'd be useful.
ReplyDeleteBut I've avoided twitter like the plague because blogger and FB are already big time eaters.... ?
Hi Kath,
DeleteYes the image credit thing is great, though I just heard [via Twitter!] that this doesn't work if you pin an image direct from Google Images. However I pinned an image I had uploaded to my blog, and was surprised to see it credited the original source, to the point that I saw the source I thought was original, which I had credited in my blog, was not it! So I was very impressed with that.
I think for starters (apart from my hairstyle inspirations) I will be using Pinterest for this purpose, to store useful images for later.
Yep, Twitter and Fb and the rest are time-sucker-uppers for sure - hence I am avoiding Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Google Plus and everything else for now!
We need an app that unifies the lot.
Thank-you for including me in your post! I found out about Pinterest from Montessori mailing lists I'm on, where people use Pinterest to collect activity ideas so I've not thought of it as a style board but more of a visual bookmarking tool - much better than lists of links that I never look at again :-)
ReplyDeleteThe Fiction Fridays board came about because I wanted to revist the books that had been showcased in previous weeks when it hit me that Pinterest could bookmark them all and keep them in one place with little effort on my part. I'm all about minimum effort ;-)
Thank you! Yes, "visual bookmarking tool" - very useful I can see. I'm looking forward to getting to know it better.
DeleteWow, I've just found this. Thank you. I confess, Pinterest to me, is therapy. I struggle with Major Depression and Anxiety (I have Bipolar) and agoraphobia. Sometimes, when I am particularly agitated, or having a bad day, sitting on Pinterest for a while, or looking through my boards is incredibly relaxing and cathartic. It has been known to stop more than one anxiety attack in it's tracks.
ReplyDelete:) Off to visit yours.
Thanks Melissa - that makes a lot of sense. Collections of beauty such as my art books, soothe me too. I think I will have to spend more time over at Pinterest...
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