April 20, 2011

I'm Obsess-ed! I'm Addict-ed! I'm Pinterest-ed!

Edit: This information is pretty out of date now that Pinterest has made many, many updates to their site over the past year. Check out Pinterest's help page for more info on how to get started!

Have you heard all the rage? Have you seen the latest news? Am I the only one behind the game on this? Surely you don't have the same addiction I do?

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about PINTEREST!

What is Pinterest? Oh, only the latest and greatest online tool around! I'm tellin' ya it's the cat's pajama's! It's the bee's knees!

Think of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can create collections of things you love and "follow" collections created by people with great taste.

As I like to say, "It combines INSPIRATION and ORGANIZATION into 1 place."

People use Pinterest to collect and share all sorts of things -- wedding inspiration, jewelry inspiration, home design inspiration. You name it, people are pinning it. And you create your own pinboards - as many as you want, named anything you want - for storing your pins.

I'm a visual person - maybe you are too - so, here are examples so you can see what I'm talking about.

This is the top right side of the screen on my account. It shows the number of people I'm following (yes, you can follow other people's pinboards) and the people following me. It also shows that I have 19 (!) boards set up and 406 items pinned. If you click on "19 Boards" like I did, it will pull up all the boards you have so you can access the items on that board.



The left side of the screen gives me access to everything in my account. It also lets me pull up my boards/pins, add new boards/pins, view other people's boards/pins, and learn about the site.


Here is a small example of 1 of my boards. It's my "Art and Photography Inspiration" board. Most of the items I've pinned were taken from other people's boards on the site. You have full access to all boards from everyone who has a Pinterest account.


Here is my "DIY Inspiration" board - pinning all the items I'd like to DIY someday.


One of the many great features of Pinterest is being able to search for inspiration that already exists on the site (like searching Google Images). For example, if I want to pull up examples of picture collages because I'm thinking about implementing one in our home (for real), I can type that into the search box and the site will pull up examples (in this case it pulled 56,680 pins). I can then repin items to my boards.


Here is another example. Say I have a love for baking, and I want to create some interesting cupcakes for a party I'm planning. I can type "cupcakes" into the search bar to find 32,103 examples! And then repin items to my "Food and Recipes" board I created.


Here's one more great feature for ya - no matter how many times a picture is repinned by someone, it always links back to the original website the picture/item was first pinned from. That way if there's something you want to purchase or read about online, you can find the website.



A few Q&A's:

Q: How do I start pinning?
A: The easiest way to pin an item is to use the Pin It bookmark. This is a special button that lets you grab an image from any website and add it to one of your pinboards (you don't have to have your account open to do this). When you pin from a website, it automatically grabs the source link and credits the original creator.

Q: How do I "follow" a pinboard?
A: Every pinboard has a follow button. When you follow a pinboard, you will see all of the pins that are added to that board on your home screen in real-time. By following lots of Pinboards, Pinterest will bring you a visual feed of things you love.

Q: What is repinning?
A: Repinning means re-posting a pin you find on Pinterest to your own collection. When you repin we credit the person who first pinned the item and bring along the original source.

Need more help? Here's a great tutorial demonstrated by Beth on her blog Home Stories of A2Z.



There's so much more I could say about this site, but I'll let you discover it for yourself (if you're pinterested!).

To take a looksy at MY Pinterest account (and the 407 items I've already pinned in the 1 week I've had it), click HERE.


Note: This is not a paid advertisement for Pinterest. I'm just dead obsessed! Now back to pinning...

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