What’s All the Interest in ‘Pinterest’?

Apparently Pinterest is the fastest growing Web site in the history of the Web. Visits to Pinterest are growing faster than they did for Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Pinterest has been talked about on TWiT a number of times but up until now I have never bothered to visit it.

I am not really into Web site fads.

I don’t have a Twitter account and have no plans to bother ever getting one. I am advised by friends that I have a Facebook account, and I do have  distant recollections of setting up a Facebook account way back when Facebook first started to become popular. But I probably only used the account about five times and I have not logged into it for at least the last two years—so my account is one of the tens of millions of ‘orphaned’ accounts at Facebook that nobody uses any more.

The theory is that the main users of Pinterest are 25 to 50 year old females and the main use is to share home-maker, family, and fashion information. This information is shared via a virtual pin-board metaphor whereby members post items on a pin-board where other members can comment on, like, of dislike the pinups.

I don’t have a Pinterest account but I have had a bit of look at the Pinterest site and my initial take is that it does look a lot like a place to share home-maker, family, and fashion information—just like they said on TWiT.

In a good half hour of looking through Pinterest I could not find anything about beer, fast cars, shooting, serious photography, computer games or programs, or what font to use on my site. But there was lots on house decorating, recipes to try, clothes (including swimsuits and shoes), family pets, travel (where I’ve been), jewellery, hair styles, weddings, flower arrangements, books I’ve read (mostly ‘love story’ books), growing square water melons (seriously), and such like.

So maybe the TWiT view that Pinterest is mainly for 25 to 50 females could be close to the truth.

If you are a member you can re-pin stuff that has already been pinned to Pinterest, but I am not really sure what re-pinning does or means. As I am not a member I can’t try it out and see what happens.

As far as I can work out there are the various aggregated pin-boards and every member has their own pin-board. But I could have this wrong.

According to the posting in Wikipedia about Pinterest the site’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting”. Hitwise lists Pinterest in their Top 10 ranking of social networks based on the number of visitors to the site.

As far as I can work out, if you plan to join Pinterest you must first have a Facebook or Twitter account—which is another reason I don’t have a Pinterst account.

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