Everyone’s doing it. But I have yet to embrace Pinterest with much enthusiasm. What am I missing?
Everyone’s doing it. But I have yet to embrace Pinterest with much enthusiasm. What am I missing?
Maybe it’s just technology fatigue, but I’m not that excited about Pinterest. At least not yet.
In case you’ve been in a cave for the past couple of months, Pinterest is the latest social media darling, a place where you can “pin” photos from anywhere on the Internet to a virtual bulletin board, creating board categories to suit your interests, such as architecture, fashion, cute cats or whatever. It has exploded in popularity, growing from 1.7 million unique visits in September to 7.2 million visits in December 2011, according to Compete.com.
Pinterest is a perfect fit for gorgeous food photos, so it’s a no-brainer for Delicious Living magazine. (Check out my colleague Caren Baginski's 5 tips for using Pinterest.) One of Delicious Living's greatest assets, in my opinion, is our archive of beautiful, professional photography that accompanies our delicious, healthy recipes. In fact, we’re working on increasing that photographic archive for just this reason: People are visual and we eat with our eyes. I’ve heard many times that the number-one reason people make a recipe is because the photograph is so enticing.
So Pinterest is a boon indeed, enabling us to get more eyeballs on those gorgeous photos and, in turn, increase traffic to our website, getting those recipes into the hands (and mouths) of more people.
That’s all good. But after initially setting up a Pinterest account for myself and for Delicious Living, I’ve already lost enthusiasm. It just feels like the latest demand to fritter away my time, an enticing distraction. I’m already frustrated by trying to understand the “why” of Twitter and I’m easily sucked into Facebook, and now here’s another “must do” medium to fracture my focus, decrease my productivity, exhaust my brain, and compromise my attempt to live a peaceful, attentive life. It tires me out.
Am I missing something? What’s your take on Pinterest: love it or leave it?
