Having got used to being ‘poked’ for years by my Facebook friends, today I was ‘pinned’ for the first time. I’d posted a photo of my garden with the daffodils out in the sunshine. A friend of mine in the US decided to upload it to her Pinterest.com page. She kindly asked if I minded being ‘pinned’. (For those interested Click here)
Pinterest is the latest ‘it will take over FaceBook’ fad. 18m users in the US and growing at 50% pm. Users seem to be almost completely female. Comshare reckons 88% of Pinterest’s traffic is driven by women. It’s basically a big pinboard where you can pin stuff you have found elsewhere on the web. A cursory glance shows that homes, internal design, weddings, cookery and gardening/flowers make up nearly all the content. People would say ‘I’m going to decorate the lounge’ and go get all the pictures they like of lounges to give them inspiration. Must admit my wife does the same with lots of cut-outs from magazines.
A quick Google News search, however, finds that enterprises are now muscling in. Ashley Furniture setup its own page only hours ago, joining an array of other enterprises like GAP.
I think the people who reckon Pinterest is the new FaceBook are wide of the mark. More likely it will be a feeder into (ie complementary) to FaceBook. Just as so many feed their Twitter feeds to Facebook (and vice versa)
On the other hand, I really do get the commercial viability of Pinterest. Here you have this willing market actually shouting out “I am getting married” or “I am spending money upgrading my kitchen”. What a wonderful time to hit them with your product.
The downside that Pinterest is finding is that the copyright in all the stuff people are posting is not theirs. Technically the whole site is an illegal download of other people’s property.
You see I own the copyright of that lovely picture of my house that is now adorning Pinterest. Fortunately some people still care. Last December an estate agent in Farnham phoned to ask if they could use one of my photos of Farnham in the snow that they had found on my website for their Xmas card. I was so chuffed I said ‘Yes’ immediately suggesting a donation to the Prince’s Trust in lieu. Perhaps there is a new career beckoning…