Explaining Pinterest, and Why You Should Care

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Join the Conversation on Facebook!

Tired of social media? Ignoring it all together? Well, join the bandwagon, because it’s not going away! In fact a new site recently popped up that is rising in popularity: Pinterest. Pinterest is a little different than sites like Facebook and Twitter, since 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.

But what exactly is it all about? The name of the site is a clue. Pinterest is a combination of the words “pin” and “interest”. Once you have a Pinterest account you literally create “pinboards” and “pin” images of stuff you like or have an interest in, creating a collage of your own tastes.

Creating Pinterest Categories

Creating categories will let you organize your account and allow people to decide what in your account they want to concentrate on. You could 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

Just like Facebook and Twitter, you can elect to follow coworkers and friends. You don’t have to follow all of a friend’s collections; for example, you can choose to follow only their collection of art, while choosing not to follow the restaurants they love in their area.

Joining Pinterest

The one challenge with Pinterest is that you have to get invited to acquire an account. You can visit pinterest.com and ask for an invite but it might be a while before you receive one. The more surefire way to receive an invitation is to have a friend invite you that already posseses an account.