What's the big deal? It's just another website. Don't get me wrong. I'm an avid Pinterest user, but what I don't get is all the hoopla! You can't hardly throw a digital stone into my blog pool without hitting a blog that's talking about or hating on Pinterest.
The other day I found this pin:
Seems to me we could all use a little more self control. "Whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. {Philippians 4:8}" If you can't help but send yourself into a spiral of despair and a wretched case of the "Gimmes" while on Pinterest, then by all means, log off and close your account. But I find Pinterest to be much more useful than detrimental!
Beyond the haters are the confused. And though I don't understand what all the discontent is about, I can help those of you who just don't get it.
Let's start with some mental imagery. Imagine a bulletin board in the middle of a wall. On this board you "pin" articles, pictures, website links and the like for all sorts of different things you want to remember or reference again.Pinterest is an online version of this. Any web image can be pinned to a board. The image carries with it a website link to where it was pinned from. When you want to reference it again, you open the board, click on the picture and visit the link. Simple. Clean. Paperless.
I use to use digital bookmarks. I had so many I had folders for my bookmarks broken up into categories. Some bookmarks I used regularly, links to sites like Hotmail, Cozi, Mvelopes, Google Reader, Facebook and Pinterest. But some of them I was only referencing a few times a month or less. When I was planning an event, say one of my daughters birthday parties, I created a folder with links to ideas, invitations, supplies, games, you name it. Sometimes I printed stuff I really wanted to use or reference again or when the printer wasn't working, transcribed it - blech! This was so time consuming!. Now I use Pinterest for anything that's not used daily.
Alrighty, so now that you understand a little bit more about what Pinterest does and why you would use it, lets go a little deeper into the functionality of it.
When you create your Pinterest account you start by categorizing some board names. Currently I have boards named: Intentional Parenting, Makeable, Bakeable, Holiday, Good to Know, Printables, Summer Fun/Rainy Day. You might have some of the same or 40 completely different ones. Start with just a few, as you start pinning you'll catch on to what needs its own board and can create more at anytime.
Once you've set those up you're going to want to download the Pin It button into your web browser. You can do this by clicking on About and then Pin It button in the drop down menu on the top right of your account screen. Pinterest will give you simple instructions for the browser you're using.Once that's all done, you're ready to start pinning! the next time you find something you want to pin you simply click the Pin It Button in your web browser, select the board and description you want in the pop up window and Pin It! You can find it on your board the next time you want it.
Once you've got the hang of it, you might start using Pinterest more like a search engine, or perhaps you'd like to browse the things your friends are browsing. When you open your Pinterest account all the pins in that feed are from people you know. You can follow all of their boards, or only some of them, or none of them at all. I have several friends who like to pin interesting vacation spots or beautiful homes. I'm not interested, and therefore I don't follow those boards. But I also have several teacher friends and lots of home-school friends who pin TONS of stuff about lessons, activities and teaching ideas. Some of this gets re-pinned for future use, lots of it I skip.
Pinterest has a search option so if you want a new recipe for a dessert, or a valentine project, you can enter your search and come up with tons of options. Lots of stuff is repeated because its been pinned by more than one person, but its still very simple to scroll through a whole host of search results until you find what you want.
Okay. That's it! Pin away! Go forth and pin prosper. Hopefully, you have a better understanding at least! And if not, you might try watching this video.
