Why Pinterest Is Cool
- Number two social network
- Valued at US$1.5 billion
- Over 20 million users
When it comes to the online world, there are more and more ways you can express yourself and/or communicate with the wider world.
One of the cooler ways is by using Pinterest. For the uninitiated, Pinterest, in its own words is “a Virtual Pinboard that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web”.
Ok, that is what it is – but what can you do with it?
Once you get over the whole ‘virtual pinboard’ issue, the real beauty of Pinterest is that it is really a social media app. That’s right, it’s like Facebook – but with pictures – lots and lots and lots of pictures which you can share, comment and also save. You can add your own words, comments, updates and change the pictures categories – so why write volumes of test when a picture says one thousand words?
Not only can you upload your own pictures and share them with the planet and you can also share other people’s pictures and comment on them and share them as well. You can find pictures from all over the web, upload them to your Pinterest account and then share them so others will do the same and also add their own ideas/words to those pictures.
Whilst this is social networking 101 (with graphics), it’s also a bit like the old show-and-tell at school but on massive and global scale.
So why does this make it so cool? Well, put simply, Pinterest allows you to communicate with the world online without the need to explain yourself- your pictures or choice of shared pictures does it all for you.
For those that like to upload pictures from their phones, there is a mobile app that you can download meaning you will never be too far away from your online mobile picture gallery.
According to the Web Showroom Blog, at present, Pinterest is the “fastest site in history to break 10 million unique visits in one week. In December last year it entered the top 10 social networks ranked by visits. By January of this year it drove more traffic to online retailers (in the US) than either Linkedin, YouTube or Google+ and after Facebook, it is the now number two social network in terms of the average time users spend on the network each month”, which averages about at almost 90 minutes.
At the time of writing and according to The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest had about 20 million users, which was up from only 1 million users as of July 2011 – perhaps one reason why the newspaper has valued it at $US1.5 billion.
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