Aside from networking and friendships becoming a virtual
reality, even things such as picture sharing, calendars, and posting ideas on
to corkboards have creeped into the virtual realm. The social media site I’m
talking about today is Pinterest. This is one of the newest sites to have
reached the ranks of extreme popularity, especially among women. So what is
this site and why do people like it so much? Pinterest is a site where you
essentially create a virtual corkboard. You can pin pictures, recipes, even
hobbies to different boards. And when you click on the icon it takes you to the
original link where that picture was found. Users even have the options to
create their own pins of ideas they liked or found.
The reason this fits into this topic is because this at one
point used to be a physical reality as well. There was a time when
people would have actual corkboards and would use them for a variety of
purposes. Though it was good idea (I’ll be honest, I still have one), there are
advantages to having a virtual corkboard. Media ecology talks about the
abilities of our new technological world. Some of the abilities of Pinterest
include collaboration and surfability (yes, I know this isn’t a real word, but
it works in this context).
The whole point of Pinterest, is to allow users to be able
to look at other people’s ideas and repin them to their board. You can also
suggest pins to other users if you think it’s something they would be
interested in. There is no privacy on this site, and it’s so all users can
interact with one another. Also, it’s nonlinear. Users are able to click on a
pin to enlarge it, then click on it again to take them to the link. Sometimes
there are multiple links embedded, so you have to do a lot of clicking before
you find the original sites, and other times it’s directly connected.
Pinterest takes a unique approach to the social media realm,
by taking something that most people wouldn’t think about and turned it into a
major hit. The idea of being able to create a board of ideas that you can
quickly reference at anytime is not only convenient and interesting.
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