Pinterest Mania

As most of you social media savvy folks know, Pinterest is a fresh medium currently experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity. It has over 10.4 million users, acquiring around a 400% month-over-month growth. It is so new that Blogger is telling me that Pinterest isn't a word by hastily underlining it in red for me as I type. Pinterest is currently driving more traffic than giants like LinkedIn, Google+ and (MySpace) combined (all of which, are considered to be spelled just fine, according to this word processing program). That's insane! In fact it's the fastest growing social media site in history!

And now I understand why.

I joined Pinterest months ago, in fact, almost a year ago to the day, and quickly forgot about it. My boards went unpinned for ages. That all changed a few weeks ago when a friend mentioned an awesome fitness site she had pinned and recommended I check out her boards.

Clicking that pin led to clicking others, which lead to clicking others, which led to repinning, which lead to adding boards, which lead to liking pins and following other pinners. Soon I was even finding unique content to pin myself and my profile was growing from 3 boards to 10 to 25. I was spending hours on Pinterest, telling others about Pinterest and even TRYING things I'd found on Pinterest. That's right....I was using the knowledge I'd gained from Pinterest. A monster was born.

A couple of weeks ago I had friends over for dinner and when asked where I came up with the recipes? PINTEREST. I went camping with friends and bought more recipes from PINTEREST. I was working out to PINTEREST-found work outs, trying out PINTEREST-discovered hairstyles and trying PINTEREST-viewed DIY cleaning tricks. I went camping with friends and bought more recipes from PINTEREST.

This all segued to an interesting conversation. While I was touting the treasure-hunting bounty of Pinterest, a friend of mine mentioned that she had been to a fabulous wedding recently and, being engaged herself and working on her plans, marvelled at the ingenuity of the happy couple. There were home made this n' thats, great guest gifts, creative decorations. She was envious of their skill and resourcefulness. And then...

she peered at their Pinterest boards.

It turns out that none of their ideas were original. ALL were lifted directly from Pinterest pins. I am of two minds on this. On the one hand, why wouldn't you take to a place like Pinterest to find inspiration for creative, crafty ways to personalize your wedding? On the other hand...do you want your guests to potentially see the origin of all of these little personal touches that made your big day special? Do you want to be unoriginal in your originalness?

This week, I thought, something to think about.

Oh, and follow me on Pinterest...http://pinterest.com/pamelahyatt/

Under: Blog

By phyatt with No comments