What the Heck is Pinterest?

For those of you who haven’t heard, the interwebs are abuzz with a fun new site.  Pinterest has become the go-to site to save anything and everything you find on the web.  While it was created in 2008 the site has recently seen an tremendous increase in popularity.  With the site you can create virtual pinboards of anything youfind on the web.  You can check out others’ pinboards and “repin” items to your board.  Planning a trip to Europe (lucky!) create a board that is dedicated to planning your trip, you can pin sites with good airpare rates, hotel websites, pictures of must visit tourist attractions and more.  Love to cook?  Create a board with all of your favorite recipes, subscribe to other foodies and repin items from their board to yours.  

As with any new social networking site, there is a multitude of new terms you must learn.  So now that I’ve explained the basic premise of the site here are some terms you’ll need to know to to get started:

Board: the place you put all of your pinned items, the best way to think about it is as a virtual corkboard, you can have as many boards as you want, one for a vacation or event you’re planning, another for awesome recipes you find and another for favorite articles.

Pin: an image representing a website or article on your pinboard, attached to each image or “pin” is a link to the original site/article, simply click on it to go to the source.  

Comment: When you pin something you have the opportunity to add any comments your like to your pin, your comments show up on the pin so if someone else pins the same thing your comment will be visible to them.  Just like with Twitter, you can mention other Pinterest users in your comments.

RePin:  Find something you like on someone else’s board you like?  Simply click the “repin” button and you can repin it to one of your boards (think retweeting)

Follower/Following:  Same thing as Twitter, you can follow people you like and people can follow you.

Like: similar to the Facebook “Like” button, you can “like” pins without having to put them on your board.  Any pins you like will show up on a separate page.

Overall, Pinterest is a fun new site and great way to save and share your favorite things from the web.  One caveat though, right now you have to be invited to join Pinterest.  Lucky for you we here at Geekulous have gotten our hands on some, leave a comment and we’ll send you an invite to the newest social networking site.

Do you use Pinterest?  What do you think of the new site?  Let us know in the comments.