The only time I seem to interact with Pinterest is when I’m searching for images of something on my phone, let’s say “pictures of mountains”. I want to get the image in full res so I go to the site, then I can’t copy it or download it.
From these brief interactions and exploring the site I just don’t see the appeal. Pinterest just seems like a terrible image search engine with the ‘feature?’ that every few scrolls pulls up similar-ish categories to the image search you did(Mausoleum might bring up Pharaohs for example). It could be that I’ve just never taken the time to use it properly, so I thought I would ask people: what is Pinterest good for / why does it exist.
Hopefully is not too harsh I am high atm.
It’s a pinboard. You collect idea’s in a visual way to create moodboards or visual collections of idea’s.
I used to be a big fan and my daughter and wife still use it a lot when researching a project. It works really well but is cluttered with paid content these days.
What’s a mood board?
On top of the definition provided by the other commenter, it’s vaguely analogous to shopping for something, and opening a new tab for everything that looks vaguely good. Then doing a pass to winnow down and close items.
There’s also structure for organizing things that are related. So if you weren’t sure if you wanted a toaster or a toaster oven, you could spatially have two separate groups.
It only clicked for me once I saw someone else use it. I’m used to it just being hostile to search traffic.
You ever see in the movies, those teen girls and young women with a cork board full of magazine cutouts? That’s a mood board.
You kind of get an idea for something, like “the ideal vacation” and any time you see something that fits that theme for you, you put it on the mood board. When you’re done, you are able to see your details together in a big picture view.
Pinterest is kind of neat because it gives you the convenience of a digital medium.
mood board