how i use pinterest
First things first: whoever hasn’t heard of Pinterest in the past year or so is a) a man b) extremely uninterested in digital media. Given that I am neither, it should come as no surprise that me and Pinterest, we’re buds. Friends. Soulmates, even. Pinterest shows me interesting things, which I then pin, ahem, put aside for later, in return for which I spend a lot of quality time with Pinterest, so that Pinterest knows I appreciate it and want to keep on meeting up.
Okay, this is becoming a mixed metaphor.
What I want to say is that Pinterest, apart from being extremely entertaining, is a true treasure trove of information organized into a neat grid-based structure of pretty pictures. Yes, it does seem to speak to the feminine side of the brain in a slightly more explicit way – all the same, I maintain that Pinterest is useful tool for all, business users and recreational pinaholics alike.
(Even if it hasn’t found a sufficient monetization model yet. AND they don’t have an official Windows Phone app. Ah well, you can’t have everything in this sad, sad world.)
Recently though, amidst my weekly pinning frenzy – my job and commute and THE ABSENCE OF AN APP having cut down drastically on my pinning time – I stopped to think about my usage pattern of Pinterest. Leaving frequency out of the equasion, I had to realise that I am a most definitely passive user of the platform, in the sense that I always, always stay within the platform itself, not even pinning, just re-pinning what others have pinned before me. Of course, to do this, I had to follow lots of active and valuable pinners in the first place, but the point is: I’m not doing the thing which Pinterest is supposedly built for, which is guiding users to interesting content via visual stimulation. The only exception to this is, of necessity, the recipe genre. Apart from that, on Pinterest I stay.
Naturally, I have a Pinterest widget in my browser to enable my pinning from other sites to my profile. However, I (barely) never use it, as I find it much more tedious than simply logging onto a site and marking what I like. Also, I can’t help thinking that several of Pinterest’s millions of users do the same, essentially becoming editors of their own and others’ experience instead of content/link creators – how else would I receive 400 followers (and counting, woohoo!) by merely repining what others have pre-pinned?
And here lies the conundrum of the afore-mentioned monetization problem. If users don’t actually “click through” to brand pages and consumer sites, and by extension, ads, what’s the point (or more professionally, value proposition) of the whole pinning malarkey?
I really hope Pinterest will find a unique and creative solution to sort this out, as I would hate to see ugly ads clogging up the platform where today I’m free to see lavender ice cream and infographics about coffee to my heart’s (and eye’s) content, out of pure, unadulterated voyeurism. If it means I have to become a more active user, than so be it. Just don’t try to sell me the ice cream. I enjoy seeing it instead.