My New Favorite Time Suck!

A friend of mine introduced me to this website/iApp by saying- it's really cool, it's a place where you can organize everything that you find on the web, like a cute pair of shoes or a great photo or places you want to travel...all in one spot. Cool, indeed. I signed up to get an invite (I'm not sure if it's in Beta or if it's trying to be exclusive) but, within a week, I was accepted. Yay! I get to sit with the cool kids at lunch!

 

When you sign up, you go through Facebook (don't you always have to nowadays?) and I skipped the permissions allowing them to post as me or post when I'm not online, I don't let anyone do that. They import your friends and your photo from Facebook and after inputting basic info, they encourage you to create your own virtual vision boards for everything that you love in life. I have 7: Inspirations (for photos), Not All Who Wander Are Lost (for travel), Cooking Fun!, Getting My Fashion On, Home is Where the Heart Is (for home decor), DIY Goodies, and Music Is What Life Sounds Like. You can create as many or as little as you like.

 
After you're all signed up, you come to the homepage where you can see what your Facebook friends that are on Pinterest are sharing. You can repin it to one of your boards and add a new message or description, like it or comment on it or all three. When your friends have bored you, you can go to the top and click on Everything which will pop up with sub-categories based on interests. Click on what you like and have fun! There are even how to and a variety of videos under their video section. There is a Popular tab and a Gifts tab with a price range breakdown so you can search for gifts within your budget.

 

I finally had a chance to really explore it today and I added the Pin It bookmarklet to my toolbar to make it easier to pin things I find on the net to my boards. They also have buttons to add to your website for other Pinners to easily pin your blog/site/review to their board. I've spent HOURS on it, falling in love with some cute outfit or some amazing sunset photo or something or other. The only problem I've encountered is when I tried to upload my own pin (first from my SD card and then, from my desktop, both times a failure). It took way too long and didn't end up uploading anything. It could be my computer, so don't let that scare you off. This is definitely worth checking out, especially if you want to visually organize all the cool things you find on the web that inspire you.

Start-up Pinterest Receives Major Round of Funding

Last week Pinterest, a site that allows people to share things on the web, raised $27 million in a round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. As part of the financing deal, general partner Jeff Jordan will be joining Pinterest’s Board of Directors. According to outside sources, the young startup has been valued at up to $200 million and has less than ten employees. The site is still in beta and is invite-only.

Pinterest is a pinboard social network that allows users to collect, organize and share interesting things found on the web. Users can take an image from any website and add it to one of their ‘pinboards.’ Each image has a link to the original source, allowing for the discovery of new things of interest.

Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann said that the company is setting out to “connect people all over the world through common interest.”

Jordan said Horowitz is excited about Pinterest for three main reasons: first, the site is showing very strong growth
metrics, despite the fact that it’s still in a semi-private beta. Second, the service has very strong user engagement — Jordan claims registered users often wind up using it “fairly voraciously”. Finally, the site has a clear path to revenues.

While Pinterest may be in the limelight, there are competitors such as FFFFound, Weheartit and Dropular among others. How these sites compete with each other through innovation will be interesting to watch. However, one thing is certaain– sharing favorite images online has struck a nerve with people.

The idea is not only proving popular, but is also interesting for venture capital and angel investors because
it has different revenue opportunities. A lot of the boards made by users have potential commercial intent (i.e. wedding or birthday lists) and there are certainly business models which could be built around them.

Pinterest was also named among the 50 Best Websites of 2011 by Time Magazine.

We ♥ – Pinterest

It’s been a while since we have written a “we love” post, but we have really fallen for something that has caught our “Pinterest“.

Many photographers, such as ourselves, have gravitated towards this new site. It has allowed us a way to visually bookmark things that we find on the internet and catalog images that inspire us in some way. We have used it to create boards of the gear we use, items we want to buy, even decorating inspiration. There are collections of recipes and DIY crafting projects.  Both Peta and Rachel have boards on Pinterest, and are completely addicted! When you follow a new person, you get to see all the things they find fascinating online and each new thing that catches your eye takes you to more boards that will continue to take you deeper and deeper down an Alice in Wonderland hole of amazing stuff.