The recent article “The Secret History of Pinterest – REVEALED!” details the downfall of the human attention span as evidenced by our favored online content. Following blogging, listmaking and infographics, Pinterest shows an even deeper downgrade in modern internet usage. Pin-some-pretty-pictures-for-me-because-god-knows-I-can’t-be-bothered-to-read-a-coherent-article, is the general premise of the piece. In my opinion, attention span isn’t necessarily the issue, I think it’s all about ease of use and (for better or for worse) appealing to the lowest common internet user’s abilities.
The visual-only concept is nothing new, but unlike the first generation of visual inspiration sites, Pinterest provides several benefits that have undoubtedly helped its mass success. I’ll be the first to admit, my Food/Dwelling/Wedding/Craft-gawker profiles have been cast aside in favor of Pinterest’s mass visual inspiration and click-of-a-button appeal.
1 – Over 30 visual categories and unlimited Boards to post to.
While other visual inspiration sites niche themselves into one category, Pinterest has the benefit (and productivity curse) of offering a wide range of visuals. Pinterest users create, name and curate “Boards”, categorizing them into one of the offered categories. Pinterest also allows for more than one “Favorites” board, as early networks allow. For junkies like me the endless supply of unique boards is key, yes I really do need three Food and Drink boards, four Wedding boards, and seven Home Decor boards.
2 – Ease of adding content and creating truly custom inspiration boards.
Sites like those in the Gawkerverse trio only allow users to “favorite” content that has been previously posted by another user. To add unique content, the user has to go through the upload process themselves. Rather than upload an image to a website or blog, and then again to the social network, Pinterest (though a variety of browser add-ons, the app and integrated sharing functions) allows the user to pull photos from the original online source, directly to their Pinterest boards. Even the most basic web user can figure out how to Pin the exact images that interest them. Pin from your phone, Pin your own photos, Pin directly from the Pinterest network. The ease of adding Pins to your Boards assures that Boards are highly personal and specific to the user’s purpose.
3 – Integration with Facebook or Twitter.
Could it get any easier for those who can’t bear to remember yet another password? Pinterest, like countless applications and sites before it, takes this one little barrier of entry away. The integration goes several steps further in letting users find the Pinterest profiles of their Facebook friends and Twitter contacts, providing a built in network to start drawing inspiration from. Once you’ve Pinned, immediately post to your other networks, feed the social media content beast.
So what can we do with it?
Beyond being fun, and seriously addictive, success stories are starting to pop up everywhere – bloggers whose Pinterest boards have taken off, with each Repin they begin to see more and more referred traffic. As with many other social networking sites, copyright is an issue. Pinterest’s core function encourages and nearly requires infringement. From my perspective, Pinterest helps blogs and original content providers (Etsy retailers), more than it hurts. As their images circulate the Pinterest community more users click through to their sites and in the blogging/Etsy community, more traffic means more ad dollars and more sales. For advertisers (like RS&E) who want to reach certain niche markets (particularly a highly engaged, young, female target) this means more possible impressions, new users, greater reach and more clicks.
Our creative department uses Pinterest to collect and store visual inspiration while concepting client campaigns and projects. Nonprofits are tugging on our heart strings with compelling visuals and virtual wish lists (something @karlafung wants to put into practice). Corporations are finding a balance between pure commercial promotion and valuable content for their audience, and seeing engagement numbers skyrocket. The uses are endless, though as with any social network, some uses are better than others. The team here at RS&E is conducting our favorite kind of “research”, playing with and pondering this fun new tool called Pinterest.
~ Originally published on the RSE blog.