Are you burned out on social media? Then you won't be pleased to hear that a new social media site is gaining traction. However, you might be interested to know that this new site, Pinterest, doesn't concentrate on the minutiae of day-to-day living as sites such as Twitter and Facebook seem to. Instead, Pinterest encourages users to discuss their interests with others. And in this way, at least, Pinterest does more to encourage creativity among its users than sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
The site's name offers a clue as to what it's all about: Pinterest is a combination of "pin," as in pinboards, and "interest," as in what you're all about. Once you join Pinterest, you make your own "pinboards" or categories. You then attach photos and pictures that fit within those categories, as if you were pinning these images to a bulletin board.
Creating Pinterest Categories
For example, you might make the category convertibles. Then you can paste any images you can find online of the new Volkswagen Beetle convertible, along with a link to the page where you found them. It's also possible to attach any photos of convertibles that you took yourself as well as add notes to these images. Then you're able to share these pinboards with other Pinterest users.
The Social Part of Pinterest
Just like Facebook and Twitter, you can elect to follow coworkers and friends. You do not have to follow all of a friend’s collections; for instance, you can choose to follow only their collection of art, while choosing not to follow the restaurants they like in their area.
Joining Pinterest
The one challenge with Pinterest is that you have to get invited to get an account. You can go to pinterest.com and ask for an invite but it might be a while until you receive one. The more surefire way to get an invitation is to have a friend invite you that already has an account.