Pinterest: The Coolest Way to Bookmark Awesome Internet Stuff

There are 2 things “the web” is currently talking about; the Facebook’s IPO and the other one is the Pinterest, a new social… pinboard. Yep, we can’t actually say it’s a network; it’s more like a bookmarking site but specifically made for photographs and video materials relevant to your interest.

All of this is shared on your pinboards, which you can easily create for each of your interests. You love James Bond movies? Create the James Bond pinboard and pin every image and video you can find on 007.

Being an invite only network, Pinterest is still unavailable to everyone, but it’s easy to get an invite – just poke somebody with an account and you’ll get it.

The Dashboard

Once you log in with your username, Facebook or Twitter account, you’ll get to your dashboard which shows you everything your friends have pinned. Pinning stuff is like bookmarking it, only on Pinterest it’s all visual and bookmarking into relevant categories (pinboards) and less about just linking.

If you hover over a pinned item, you’ll be able to comment on it, like it or re-pin it. Basically, the Dashboard is the place where you’ll spend most of your time.

Finding New Cool Stuff

On top of your dashboard you’ll find some filtering options: Pinners you follow, Everything, Videos, Popular and finally, Gifts. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but you’ll want to focus on the Everything filter. It holds several categories in which other people’s pinboards are placed.

That way you can find interesting stuff to like or if it’s so cool, you can pin it to one of your pinboards. Of course, if you find out that some people keep pinning awesome and more awesome stuff, you can follow all of their pinboards or just a few of them.

That’s the great thing about Pinterest; you don’t have to follow a person, you follow only the stuff you like.

Your Own Pinterest Shop

We’ve mentioned the Gifts filter, right? It will show you all the products that have a price on them – which actually means you can use Pinterest as a gallery of your work! Create some photos, videos or screenshots of your (mostly) handmade work, upload and give them a price.

Note however that Pinterest doesn’t have (yet) any classic webshop features. You’ll only be able to price your items and potential buyers will try to contact you if interested, but you’ll still have to arrange the payments yourself. Who knows, maybe Pinterest will become a true webshop in the future, offering some plans for its customers as a business model.

Pin Anything

Almost every site today has a has a Facebook Share or a Tweet This button. Pinterest allows you to add its Pin It button to your website if you create content that is pinnable. Of course, you can use Pinterest’s bookmarklet to pin everything from the web, even if it doesn’t have the Pin It button.

Pinterest might be a little empty and pointless at first, but think of the ways you can use it to bookmark all of the great things you find all over the web. Bookmark them, sort into different pinboards, find new stuff. Once you realize that you’ve spent an hour or so on the Everything tab looking for awesome stuff in different categories, you’ll know you’ve become pinned to Pinterest!