Saturday, March 31, 2012

What Is Pinterest?


I remember months ago hearing of Pinterest for the first time in a 'tweet' and ever since I got my invitation and created my first board I gotta admit that I'm becoming more and more addicted to it.

 But what is Pinterest and what's all this buzz about a new image social media community?
As defined in wikipedia Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies and much more... and believe it or not like Twitter, Pinterest uses its own vocabulary: The planks are called boards and annotations pins (Pin + interest-> Pinterest)  
As I read "The site was born in March 2010, but it wasn't so popular and known until in they launched an iPhone application back in the month of August. Since then, traffic has not only grown but also and according to Alexa, Pinterest now ranks 26 among the most visited websites in the United States and 126 worldwide. In December of 2011 it reached 11 million unique users. The visual appeal of the site is what seems to have triggered its immense growth (it’s the fastest site in history to reach 10 million unique visitors per month).


While originally most people thought of Pinterest as a site for women who liked to scrapbook, it has proved to a much more powerful social media tool.  Users on Pinterest can “repin” which is the equivalent of a “retweet” on Twitter, or they can like and comment on users boards.  Much like Twitter, Pinterest gives users the option to follow certain people or genres according to their interests.
Local businesses are seeing the appeal of Pinterest because it allows them to connect with potential consumers by showing visuals of the products or services.  While Pinterest is not a good fit for all businesses, it has proved to be especially useful to clothing stores/brands, jewelry makers, bakeries, restaurants, event planners, hotels, etc.  In addition to offering an insight into your business, it can also help drive sales.  Pinterest is a great way to “advertise” for free and we all know that nothing beats word of mouth advertising.

Video of  CBS- Video: What is Pinterest?


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Have you joined Pinterest yet?  How's your experience been so far? Find my Pinterest here..