Pinterest is this year’s fastest growing startup. If you haven’t visited the site yet, then you are one of the uninitiated who are unaware that Pinterest is a virtual “pin board.” Using a simple button that you add to your web browser, you can “pin” any image that you see on the internet to an online pin board related to a category.
In many ways, Pinterest could be a fun and even inspiring web tool. You could create online pin boards of art images that inspire you, or photos of inspirational people. You could use your virtual pin board to keep track of books that you want to read, or you could pin pictures of beautiful landscapes in places that you hope to some day visit. One of the best ways in which Pinterest is being used is to display craft ideas and lists of craft projects that people can do with a picture of the end product.
Those are the good uses of Pinterest!
However, there’s a not-unexpected consumerist tilt to Pinterest. Of course, the company needs to make money, so ultimately appealing to large consumer brands who may later advertise with the site is important to the company’s business model. However, it’s already become apparent that what Pinterest is best at is…making you want to buy things.
If you scan the website and sift through a lot of the posted “pins,” you quickly notice that many of the pins are for products that people want. Clothing, makeup and jewelry predominate. There are also a great number of pins that are compelling images that have been drawn from consumer advertisements. Fashion advertisements, for example, are incredibly visually appealing. That means that individuals are often pinning them in Pinterest because they look beautiful. What’s the end result? Free advertising among the Pinterest community for those companies with compelling advertisements. And more advertising means more people who are coveting a product and, ultimately, likely to buy it. In fact, the default “pin board” that you go to when you join Pinterest is called “Products I Love.”
Pinterest’s user base is growing daily, and while the technology behind the site is fascinating and even potentially a great tool to use, we have to wonder if it’s not ultimately going to do more harm than good. After all, there’s already enough advertising thrown in front of us that companies pay for. Do we really want to become our own advertising engines for each other?
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