Why I Became a New Fan of Pinterest

This is a continuation of an article about Evernote.  To read that article, click here.

I started reading about Pinterest a couple of months ago. I visited the site, and initially wasn't too excited about it. It looked like visual overload to me. Kinda like looking at the community bulletin board at the library: a collection of mishmash that looks like a random mosaic. I don't know about you, but it wearies my mind to think about looking at each item. That's what Pinterest reminded me of.

However, I read that a number of people LOVED it, so I requested an invite to use it.  Later I read about how you can put a "pin it" in your bookmark toolbar. I put one in half-heartedly. A few days ago, I tried it, and was instantly wowed.

I don't recall which article was, but I hit "pin it" on my bookmark toolbar. Up came a new popup window showing all of the pictures on that page.  Below is a screen shot of when I hit Pin It for a blog post telling about how to make slime.

I selected a picture, and clicked on Pin It. Another popup allowed me to write a caption for the picture and put the pinned photo into a board (category).

Later when I viewed the board, I clicked the picture that I had pinned, and it took me back to that article!  This is the one thing that I didn't know about Pinterest.  I just thought it allowed people to collect pictures of interesting things.

I immediately saw the advantage of using Pinterest over Evernote for items that contain photos.  Rather than use up a limited amount of space allowed on Evernote, I can pin it to Pinterest which uses very little space since it's essentially a link to the original article and picture.  (Note:  I just read that there is a limit to how many pins and boards you can have, but I do not know what that limit is.  I also read that a quick way to tag things you like is to "like" the pin rather than "repin" it.  You can later go to your profile page and categorize the pins that you liked.)  I do still like to use Evernote for text-based information (such as recipes).

For you fellow iDevice users, there is now a free Pinterest app!

For bloggers, you can possibly increase traffic to your blog by pinning a few pictures from your posts.  Use caution as it goes against Pinterest etiquette to overuse this strategy.

If you would like an invitation to try out Pinterest, please email me at mrsavakinsey@gmail.com