Pinterest—the internet’s new “It” social media site—founded in 2009 has been receiving a lot of media praise and attention over the course of the last couple weeks. The peak in interest has actually come as a “Big surprise,” says Lilly Anders, a spokesperson for the company.
If you are unfamiliar with Pinterest and missed their coverage on Mashable, TechCrunch, CrazyTechWonder7′s Tumblr, CNN, or Cartoon Network, Pinterest allows users to share photos. That is pretty much it. Users can also comment on other user’s photos. But really, that is it.
“It began as a joke,” according to Anders, “the founders were sitting around eating FroYo and somebody said ‘There should be a site that lets you share photos’.” “What’s funny,” Anders added, “was at that exact moment one of them was uploading a picture they took of their pomegranate FroYo from a really cool angle to Facebook.”
“Nobody honestly believed people needed another site to share photos,” Anders said, “it’s already a saturated market with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Picsca, vi.sualize.us, Shuttefly, WordPress, and Tumblr, just to name a few. But here we are.”
The entire site was built over the course of one lunch break—not surprising considering the site only has two features. “Before you know it,” Anders says, “users were registering and linking to photos from their own blogs. It’s so funny. We’re not adding any value. All of this content exists out there already. We’re like the middle guy’s middle guy.”
“Investors were just throwing money at us. Including coins! And those hurt like hell. We also have several celebrity angels we can’t even mention,” according to Anders. Of course as Anders was saying this, she was pointing to a picture of a shirtless Ryan Gosling on her desktop wallpaper and nodding her head.
Cindy Everton, a stay-at-home-single-female from New York, was searching new social sharing services to show off her cats when she discovered Pinterest. Everton calls the process a “huge time sink” considering she also shares photos of ‘Minxy and Jinxy’ on Image Spark, We Heart It, Lockerz, and FFFound.
Anders says, “It’s a mystery why anyone would use Pinterest. They’re already sharing their photos and favorite grain free coconut cinnamon raisin pancake recipes everywhere else.” Anders believes, “We’re drowning the internet in self-promotion. But hey, we won’t stop until we drown every last one of you is a sea of stupid pet photos, pretentious lactose free recipes, and all the dumb bracelets people sell on Etsy.”
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Pinterest is already overrun by people who’s real motivation is to sell things to you. Beware of that. It’s all about marketing, folks. I’m going to read my kindle now.
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The difference, for me, between Pinterest and other photo sharing sites is that:
1) Pinterest isn’t just about photos, it’s about links. So really, it’s as if Flicker and Twitter had a baby. Sort of.
2) The “Boards” aspect. It’s an online “Vision board” or scrapbook where you get to put up and organize randomness you’ll want to refer back to later. Again, it’s not just about images, but the information sometimes linked to those images, and what you want to do with them.
I think it appeals to women for that reason. Links behind nice images that are easy to organize as opposed to a boring list of links.
I can see your point however there are some points that you over looked:
1. Tumblr and WordPress make things more complicated if your just wanting to share a picture.
2. We Heart It is similar however they don’t have any mobile support and have no apps like Pinterest does for iOS.
3. Pinterest will send you an email at the end of the day (or through out the day) that shows if people followed you and what posts people liked and repined the most. (I personally like this the best)
4. Like Facebook, it lets you follow other people that have the same interests and shows them on a, for lack of a better word, wall.
I do have a WordPress, Tumblr, We Art It, and know knows what other accounts I’ve forgotten and Pinterest is the most user friendly out there.
Haha. This is great. I don’t get Pinterest at all.
Oh my god… this was…absolutely amazing….