What Piques your Pinterest ?

The search for the next big thing in social media continues and to many Pinterest seems to offer great potential. Launched in March 2010, Pinterest is a platform that allows you to digitally collect, organise and share your favourite images from the web – such as photos, images of celebs, fashion pics or recipe ideas. As an approved registered user, you can create your own digital pinboards to reflect your varied interests (such as 'favourite movies', 'Favourite Photos of Angelina Jolie’ ‘Best Irish Whiskeys’ or ‘Best Pubs in Ireland’) Safe to say it will give an interesting insight into what floats your boat, so be careful what you decide to pin !

As an illustration of its many potential uses, it seems many blushing brides to be are using it as an online scrapbook to pin pictures of their favourite wedding dresses, flowers, cakes and venues…a virtual mood board if you like, to which their friends and family can also contribute.




To these boards you can 'pin' images from across the web in a number of ways:

· uploading images directly from your computer or phone

· using the 'Pin it' bookmarklet tool to save images viewed either online or offline. This will redirect the image from a site straight to your board using the URL

· or by 'repinning' from other users' boards


In the past three months alone, Pinterest has attracted 11 million unique visitors a week, securing placement on the list of top ten social networks (according to Hitwise data). In December, Pinterest was named the Best New Start-Up of 2011 by TechCrunch, putting it firmly in the spotlight for millions of technology users across the world.

More importantly recent research by Shareaholic indicated the site has overtaken Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn for site referrals, generating 3.6% of referred traffic from January - more than the three of them put together. While still some way off Facebook’s impressive 26.4% it is nonetheless making significant waves for a new kid on the block.

As always the inevitable question is what can it offer the business world ?. Early indications are that while it is not designed for direct customer engagement it still can be used to facilitate sharing and liking among fans if used properly. Pinterest also takes the best of Facebook and Twitter to draw people into its own social space and is currently being experimented with by a number of global brands. For many it will be a case of trial and error and of course close watching of how users of the site engage and interact with the content.

One thing is clear at least. It offers brands an ideal way to listen to what products people like more than others, and why. For now Pinterest isn’t about promoting brands, it’s about letting consumers share what they like and this should remain its primary purpose…at least for the foreseeable future.

One to ‘Pin’ your hopes on ? We suggest you sign up for now and observe it in action, before jumping in with your brand.