Pin, Pin, Pin. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Pinterest pin image from Pinterest

Once upon a time I am sure there was a media and household frenzy about an ACTUAL bulletin board:

Spotted: Design*Sponge

Somewhere to pin all your notes, bills, images and ideas. Fast forward to 2012 and things have gone virtual/electronic. 110%. That virtual something is Pinterest. I feel like Pinterest is popping up all over the place… Relatives, old friends, new friends and mostly the media are talking about it. Pinterest has generated a whole lot of media attention worldwide. One of my most favourite bloggity people Igor from Happy Interior Blog was tweeting about the German media attention, I’ve seen several Canadian media outlets (here and here) discussing it’s growing popularity as well as the founder Ben Silbermann creating quite the stir at Alt Summit as a keynote speaker (thanks for sharing that Will!). If you don’t want to watch the video – here is a summary with some commentary about Ben’s talk.

I love Pinterest and have been lucky enough to have been pinning away for awhile now…. Over the 5,000 mark for my own collection of inspiring images!

I thought it might be nice to do a roundup of some great articles and blog posts which give helpful information and tips for the Pinterest newbies (and oldies!), or just some interesting commentary about it in general.

A general introduction to Pinterest by blog stylist

A Dude’s Guide to Pinterest by the Philadelphia Magazine

The Wallstreet Journal is even talking about it – Pinterest Rate of Referral Now Close to Twitter, Google+

The Nester wrote an amazing article that I took so much away from, Pinterest and Blogging: The Good, The Bad and The Huh? <- if you take nothing else away from this blog post, make sure you read this one (especially if you blog!

If you have a ‘brand’ here are 5 things to keep in mind when using Pinterest from SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle)

With the explosion of Pinterest, there has also been some kinks and bumps regarding commenting, following and the inability to control comments on your own pins. Gawker writer Adrian Chen wrote a great article called Hot New Social Media Network Pinterest Torn Apart By Marginally Crude Picture.

A When To Pull the Pin article by Kal at A Love Life

I have also seen people ‘quit’ or close their Pinterest accounts because they couldn’t take random followers making comments on images that were simply pinned because they were beautiful/interesting/funny etc. Bonnie Tsang shut down her account for awhile but she’s back now.

Another great etiquette article by by My 3 Boybarians 

AGBEAT has some great suggestions for how Pinterest can improve in 2012. Take heed Pinterest! One definite area of improvement that has recently cropped up is it’s search function. I have complained about it several times on Twitter. For some reason the search function has gone haywire and doesn’t do it’s job anymore. It makes research incredibly tedious again (come back old search function pllleeeeaaassseee!).

Hilarious idea that Pinterest could lead to pin hoarders on Canada.com

An amazing article exploring the ethics of Pinterest by Anile of Girlfriday

A recent article about a lawyer who is also a photographer who made the leap of deleting her account after she considered the legal implications.

Lastly, Pin Etiquette written by the folks at Pinterest! 

Want to follow me on Pinterest or just check out what I am pinning? Come visit me!

The Row House Nest on Pinterest