News   /   Pinterest: New (Social) Kid on the block

Many have tried to duplicate the success of Social Media giants like Facebook and Twitter. And many have failed! However, Pinterest is growing so fast that we think, that it will be the next big (social) thing!

pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting, also known as ‘pinning,’ images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins,’ usually with a common theme). users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the pinterest bookmarklet, pin it button, or just a url.

What they did was reinterpret the popular "Share" button by Facebook and the "Tweet" button by Twitter into a "Pin it". The most important shift, however, is not in the Pin or the pinboards, but in the highly visual element of the medium. As Facebook becomes highly loaded and Twitter remains mainly textual, pinterest communicates with less text and more pictures, photos and illustrations.

This also means that industries such as travel and tourism, that rely heavily on visual emotions to promote and sell, should seriously take a moment to look into this new social medium. Some early research already indicates that pinterest could be a bigger traffic driver than Facebook!

Since pinterest is still in beta, user access to pinterest still operates under an invitation-only basis. That being said, you can request an invitation, and pinterest doesn’t exactly seem to be very stingy about granting requests. Visit www.pinterest.com, click “request an Invite,” and enter your email address to be notified when you have access to create your account. or you can ask a friend who already has a pinterest account to invite you, a much quicker way to gain access than waiting for pinterest to grant your request.