A few things to think about
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 9:25PM
Like quite a few friends, I’ve been grabbed by the Pinterest bug. I won’t say I spend hours on there, but I can see how easily I could get sucked in. Like the old days of internet surfing, it’s easy to follow one bit of eye candy to the next and before long, an hour has passed and little has been achieved!
We’re currently planning our summer road trip and South Dakota will feature, so I was amused to find the SD Pinterest board. In fact, I was impressed by the fully featured website for the state which made planning our visit really easy! I repinned a couple of the photos to my own Pinterest board and moved right along. As I did, I muttered something about it to the Chief Road Trip Planner sitting beside me, which prompted him to look up quizzically and ask “What? Pinterest? What’s that then?”
Question #1: Is Pinterest a woman thing?
Generally speaking, I use my Pinterest board as a repository for things I might otherwise lose track of, as inspiration for a project or to store one or two ideas and thoughts. It’s a great way of storing all these visual prompts and I would say that it fulfils the same purpose as my bookmarks did – before it was quicker to google everything!
So, here we are in February and I notice that my blog has suddenly rather a lot of referrals from Pinterest. That provokes a little curiosity so I dig around in my stats and find the picture above was pinned by someone onto their Valentine page. Fine with me – no problem. I posted a tutorial on how to make the little cards last year and since it’s hardly rocket science, I wasn’t really giving much away. But once again, the word “pinterest” was on my mind, even if it was for a slightly different reason this time.
Today, however, I am reaching the conclusion that Pinterest must have reached a critical mass. Firstly, I come across this article which raises all kinds of very pertinent points about ownership of images, ideas and material and certainly offers food for thought regarding what I share and how I protect my photographs and ideas.
Question #2: Have you given any thought to potential copyright issues? Will it change how readily you share ideas and post photographs of your work?
No sooner had I read this, than I came across someone else asking herself this very same question. Amy has written a blog post about how she is thinking carefully about to protect her work too. Well worth a read, as are the posts immediately preceding that one.
And then, as if to hit the message firmly home, I opened the “Social Media” section of Zite as I was reading my ipad and what headline was there, staring me in the face?
How to Market your Consumer Based Business on Pinterest.
Which brings me to my final question #3: How much longer will it be before Pinterest is overrun by commercial sites and marketing men?
I haven’t even begun to think about this aspect yet.
Oh my.
Reader Comments (7)
An excellent and informative post, with interesting links Gill, thank you.
Like you, I have used pinterest as a way of "bookmarking" interesting ideas or starting points. And I have also recently become much more aware of the reality of copyright issues. I have been very lucky in that when a company saw one of my images on my blog, they contacted me directly and purchased a similar image for a fair price ... it could easily have gone the other way, they could have used the image and probably I would have been non the wiser. The more I read about Pinterest, the more I think I should not use it. It is a jungle!
K
Like you I use Pinterest to 'save' things I'm interested in. I have a copyright disclaimer on my blog but I know that google images downloads loads off it and there is nothing I can do unless I want to spend ages putting watermarks on images.
As for the commercial side, I thought Pinterest 'code' was that you shouldnt use it to promote yourself. Someone I follow on twitter was setting out to do just this and if it was anything like the self-promotion on twitter it would have been very obvious. I told them I thought this was against the 'code' of Pinterest. However, I suspect it is only a matter of time before it is overtaken by companies promoting themselves, which would be a pity as at the moment it feels like a little club sharing ideas and inspiration.
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Gill, every-time I use Pinterest to go somewhere else with it and post it I wonder about copyright infringement all the time. I have been going to the Originally Pinned by - and then using that as a reference. I know so much online are creations by people that are deserving of protection of their art. It will evolve. I remember as a child in New Mexico hearing about the information highway and how it would change laws and make specialty lawyers. Quite a concept in 1969, lawyers writing laws about stuff in the sky as my mom waved her arm across the sky for the information highway. Remember New Mexico has two of the four national weapons research labs and the second highest concentration of PhD' in the USA along the Rio Grande corridor. We were the dead last to have fashion, but boy-o-boy we had scientists !
On Pinterest Friday the 17th
http://pinterest.com/pin/73816881362280472/
"When to Pull the Pin: Good Pinning Manners"
How to keep original work properly credited.