Social Media Challenge #2: Pinterest

Ok, I had huge reservations about Pinterest before I even really knew anything about it. All I had seen or heard about it was that it had lots of pictures of braids or crafty projects and that didn't really interest me at all.

I decided to not judge a book by its cover (which I totally do , by the way) and dive into Pinterest. 

The basic principle of Pinterest is that you follow boards made by other users. Those users have collected pins that can be taken from anywhere on the internet and categorized them into things like "books", "recipes", etc. You then build a personalized home page that organizes pins by the date they were added. The home page has similarities to Facebook in the sense that it amasses the things you like on one page. If you then wanted to take a closer look at a pin, you just click on it.

 As expected, most of the boards I follow are book/library related but there are a few surprises. A few examples are: books, Lord of the Rings, typography and lettering, tv and movies, recipes, etc.

I have to say this website is very well done. There is almost no learning curve so you   can navigate boards quick quickly. The layout is great and even if you might have a lot going on on your home page it feels very simplified. Their use of colour is sparse but when used really reinforces the brand. This might be the library tech in me but sometimes I wish the pins were organized less randomly, but I get that it's supposed to be like a pin board with things not exactly equal.

One thing that really bothered me was something I discovered while writing this post. I tried to make a list of the boards I was following and thought there would be a page that listed them. What I ended up finding was a page listing the people I was following instead. On your homepage each pin lists what board it came from, but obviously each user posts at different times/days and older pins would not be at the top of your home page. I got as much information as I could, but I could still be missing some of the board titles from my list.

My favourite board would have to be "books" because the user really goes out of their way to post a lot of material that is interesting and relevant. Some of the pins are a little silly (mostly the memes) but still interesting.

I can kind of see how libraries could use this in an interesting way. They could build boards for library programs, new books in their collections, library shelves around the world, etc. It would be interesting to see if this catches on, but I think for the moment Facebook still has the monopoly due to its sheer number of users.

I'm realizing that I have a lot of pre-conceived notions of what these social media platforms are actually like. I really need to take a step back and use them before judging. Also, to be a complete hypocrite, one of the boards I most often look at is actually pictures of braids.