Pinterest - The Devolving of Social Media

Remember 10 years ago, when Myspace was the coolest new thing? Everyone wanted to be a part of "Tom's" network, and all the popular kids had a myspace page.

You could design your own layout.  Have a playlist of your favorite songs.  Make a bio/online resume, including pictures, words, videos, and more.

Then, as business started to notice, saying "we should probably market to this," myspace died.

What killed myspace?  Facebook.

Facebook offered a 'cleaner' interface.  Simply put, you can't design your own layout anymore.  You can't have music playing on your profile.  You post status updates, pictures, videos and links.  It was a dumbed-down version of myspace, and people LOVED it.

Simplification rules.  So how do you simplify Facebook?  Twitter.  It's facebook in 140 characters or less, and designed for mobility.

But... words are overrated, right?  Let's cut those out.  Enter Pinterest.

Pinterest is 'the next big thing,' especially with women.  You pin pictures you like (recipes, fashion, quotes, as long as they're in an image file) and you share with your friends.  For example, my ex wife is newly engaged and is planning a wedding.  She pins decorations, cakes, dresses, etc she likes, and her friends go "DAWWWWWW..."

That's pinterest in a nutshell.

And businesses are trying to find ways to capitalize.

As a blogger, my blog's continued success involves 'staying current with the times' and using social media trends help fuel blog traffic.  But pinterest?  It doesn't quite work for me.

You see, pinterest is for pictures, and this blog is more than pictures.  If I showed cute lolcat images or talked about skinny jeans on fat dudes, I'd have relevant pictures to pin.  My focus is more on the words instead of the pictures, and not the other way around.

Twitter?  I use it.  Stumbleupon?  Great for traffic.  But pinterest?  Sorry.  Not for me, not for my blog.  I only have one thing to say to pinterest:

Businesses who can use images and pinterest to their advantage may have found a great new marketing tool.  For those of us who use words, humor, sarcasm and wit, pictures DO say a thousand words, but not always in the right way.

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