Earlier this week Pinterest announced open registration, meaning anyone can now sign up for an account without the need of an invite. Hoorah!
The Pinterest blog reads, “We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know.”
Users are also now able to sign up to the site using their email address, in addition to the previous options of signing up via either Facebook or Twitter.
Being a bit of a Pinterest admirer, I’m pleased that the site is finally throwing its doors open to the world, as it will hopefully encourage the curious bystanders to step inside for a mooch around.
Convert
I must admit, when I first tried Pinterest, I was less than enthusiastic: another overhyped social start-up with little to offer, other than a whole lot of cat photos and ‘instagrammed’ cakes, I thought.
Several months on, and 200ish pins later, I’m hooked.
To me, Pinterest is the perfect combination of useful and fun: its a genuinely great bookmarking tool, that looks awesome, is simple to use, and integrates seamlessly with other social channels.
As it stands, my Pinterest profile contains around 10 boards, made up of pictures of stuff I like the look of, including food, design and content inspiration, as you’d expect I suppose.
Pinterest is the perfect platform for hosting such things, and offers a far more enjoyable/efficient alternative to standard social bookmarking tools.
Business time
More recently, some colleagues and I have started to explore how Pinterest could be used within the workplace, and its been an interesting exploration.
Firstly, Pinterest is a great collaboration tool. For example, we’ve been known to produce the odd infographic here and there, for both ourselves and our clients. By creating collaborative boards, everyone involved can pin ideas and inspiration on one easy to manage page. It also looks nice, is easy to digest and can be shared via single URL.
This method is proving popular with everyone involved, and is far more efficient than our previous email + spread sheet + printer approach.
Secondly, we’re currently looking at ways in which we could use our company Pinterest account as a valuable content resource for others. Again, this is proving an interesting exploration of what content people need vs. what we have to offer. More about that another time.
Setting the standard for using Pinterest as a resource is The Catalyst Partnership. This account has around 20 boards, predominantly made up of digital themed infographics: Facebook infographics, Twitter infographics, Pinterest infographics, SEO infographics, etc.
The boards are updated regularly, with some boards containing 200+ pins. While a simple concept, The Catalyst Partnership has created a great resource here, and one I regularly refer to for a source of infographic inspiration.
And finally
The only gripe I have with Pinterest is the inability to make boards private, i.e. only seen by you, or you and chosen contributors. Private boards would come in extremely useful when collating inspiration for private projects, or developing mood boards for clients. The sooner Pinterest implements private boards, the better.
If you haven’t experienced Pinterest yet, now is the time to do so. It’s not all cats and cakes, I promise.
