Pinterest debuted with an invitation-only beta version in December 2010; in August 2012, Pinterest was available to the public. As of October 2016, Pinterest reached 150 million active users according to Forbes.
“Pinterest allows users to save images and categorize them on different boards. They can follow other users’ boards if they have similar tastes. The evolution of Pinterest is based on the shared interest of its users and relies on its members to produce the content. The most popular categories, as of March 2012, were home, arts and crafts, style/fashion, and food.” Wikipedia
Pinterest can be utilized in a variety of ways. In the early stages, it seemed like it was being used as bulletin boards for temporary events – planning a wedding, planning a new baby room, etc. It has since evolved into a very useful utility for nearly everything. It’s impressive how quickly the Pinterest Save button shows up in just about every picture you come across on the internet.
Someone asked me recently how I used Pinterest – for me it’s almost a scrapbook of things I want to do, things I’m doing, things I like, etc.
- Media to Consume board: if someone recommends a book or I read a review of a good movie, I find it online and pin it to this board. After I read/listen, I either delete or I move to one of the boards where I would recommend it (like Books I loved or Best Shows/Characters). I want to see the documentary “Botticelli Inferno” one day.
- Places I Want to Go board: I pin places I’d love to see one day. When planning our Spain/Portugal trip, I pinned all the cities we planned to visit. If I travel to that place, I move the pin to Places I’ve Been board. (My dream in life is to move pins from the Go board to the Been board!).
- For The House board: items we purchased and use in the house so if someone asks me about an item, I can send them the pin. I need to order new filters for our vacuum, and I pinned our Shark vacuum so I can check that board to verify I’m buying the filters for the right model.
- Projects board: where I collect ideas that eventually coalesce into a finished project. When we renovated our kitchen, I collected all of the various items like cabinets, countertops, flooring, etc. Once we finished the project, all of the items down to the special grout for the tile were re-pinned to the For the House board. One example is the dishwasher we purchased – when it broke recently, I could quickly go to that board and get the model number.
- My Products board: I keep track of the products I use so that if I need to reorder the information is always available.
- My Favorites board: my favorite things like perfume, coconut cake, Wawa coffee, the harness we bought for our dog, etc.
- Recipes board: I rarely cook, but if I stumble across a recipe that looks delicious and sounds easy to make, I’ll pin it here.
- Fun – I have a variety of other boards for fashion, minimalism, tips, animals, etc.
I was an early user of Evernote, but now I collect the things I want to save in Pinterest instead. Most everything on Pinterest is public, but you have the option of creating private boards as well as collaborative boards.
It really has evolved into quite a useful tool.
A Sortorian Trying to Figure It Out 