What is Pinterest?

Tired of social media? Ignoring it all together? Well, hop on the bandwagon, because it’s not going away! In fact a new site recently popped up that is becoming popular: Pinterest. Pinterest is a little different than sites like Facebook and Twitter, as it focuses purely on the interests of the users. This encourages creativity by allowing you to share your interests with other people instead of just posting updates about your day-to-day life.

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 are all about. When you sign up for 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 onto a bulletin board.

Creating Pinterest Categories

Creating categories will allow you to organize your account and permit people to decide what in your account they want to concentrate on. You can choose to share all of your pinboards with other users or only a couple. You can not only make notes about the images you pin to your pinboard, but you can also add links to sites where you found the pictures.

The Social Part of Pinterest

While Pinterest incorporates a different approach to social media, its main purpose is still social interaction. You can decide to follow as many people as you want as well as only follow the pinboards you’re interested in. Say a friend has a collection of local restaurants; you’re able to follow that, while choosing not to follow her collection of “all things cute.”

Joining Pinterest

This is the most difficult part about Pinterest. You have to be invited to join. You can visit pinterest.com and request an invite but there’s no telling just how long it will take to get your invitation. One surefire way is to ask a friend that has a Pinterest account to invite you.