:put a pin in it Put a PIN Pinterest is the muse for dreamers of a more colourful life
CORK BOARDS ONCE HUNG in pride of place, serving spectators with a regular dose of visual inspiration. We cut out the pictures we loved from magazines and the like… recipes, dream homes, holiday destinations and sent out to the universe all the positive vibes we could muster for karma to deliver on our colourful paper aspirations. Now the options for inspiration have been taken to a whole
new level, as over 10 million users worldwide add daily to Pinterest's database of still-shot magic. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account you can sign up
with this or a simple email address will suffice. Once you've registered you'll be asked to choose a few images that you like and Pinterest will make some board suggestions to get you started. Boards can be described as categories you want to put photos into. For example, you could have boards as general as clothes, dream house and photography to specific items as hairstyles, wallpapers and cupcakes. What is the difference between Pinterest and a Google
image search you may ask… the answer is quality. The images that users load and share to Pinterest tend to have an artsy superiority to the standard stock distributed through Google. And soon you will find yourself as a user setting your own standards higher than what you may have contributed to the
internet in the past. But user beware… businessinsider.com recently reported the story of a
lawyer with a passion for photography who shut down her Pinterest boards after she saw photographers complaining about copyright violations on Facebook. She wondered why Facebook could get in trouble for copyright violation and Pinterest couldn't. She then browsed Pinterest's Terms of Use section where
she found Pinterest's members are solely responsible for what they pin and re-pin. They must have explicit permission from the owner to post everything. "My initial response is probably the same as most of
yours: 'Why [can't I pin their work? ]' " the lawyer wrote. "I'm giving them credit and it's only creating more exposure for them and I LOVE when people pin my stuff!' But then I realized, I was unilaterally making the decision FOR that other photographer...Bottom line is that it is not my decision to make. Not legally and not ethically." So as long as you're adding original content you're fine and
as for content that you're re-pinning… we need to trust that others are only uploading what's legally theirs too. Nakita Ardern
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social bookmarking site where users collect and share photos of their favourite events, interests and hobbies. One of the fastest growing social networks online (the network reached 10 million users in February) Pinterest is the third-largest such network behind only Facebook and Twitter. The start-up recently closed a $120 million round of funding and is looking to expand into overseas markets such as France, Germany and Japan.
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