Pinterest: From memes to shopping

Pinterest is a popular way to communicate in UK, no words are necessary; it is a no man’s land where mostly everyone is beautiful and having fun but there is also a space for the ugly and cruel side of life. You can glimpse into the online scrapbooks of royals (Princess Eugenie has an account), celebrities (Stella McCartney and Paris Hilton are Pinners), it is mostly about style and not just hairstyle, look for brands or fashion designers (Tory Burch the London yummy mummy’s darling), peaceful gardens and designer dishes. It is an excuse and escape for womento express themselves(according to Pew’s latest social media update women use Pinterest at a much higher rate thanmen, in US nearly half of online women/45%  use the virtual pinboard).Many womenoften look for inspiration, confidence and a new interpretation of life. A quick search on Pinterest can find quotes and poems to fit feelings, lifestyles to enchant or fill the viewer with envy, ideas to admire or emulate, cute pets and self-help suggestions; as Pinterest professes it is a catalogue of ideas that provoke the viewer to think “How Pinteresting”.

This week Pinterest launched an experimental new technology named “Lens”, capable of seeing ideas through the viewer’s eyes without having to use words to search for them; it allows the camera in the Pinterest App to discover ideas inspired by objects in the real world. If Lens is pointed at a pair of kitten heels, tapping will jump to related styles orwhat to wear with them;for now Lens works best with fashion, food and home decoration, everything else is in development;Lens opens a whole new world of imagery to explore and inform. Evan Sharp the 34 year old billionaire architect and creative head of Pinterest says “Sometimes you don’t really know what you’re looking for until you see it.” This new App is not just a boon for consumers of images but for businesses selling them. Now that Curalate’s “Shop the Look” joined Pinterestat the end of last year, 110 million monthly browsers are invited to go beyond window-shopping and making Pin-boards. Shop the Look matches imageswith retailers and this allows thePinterestedto search visually, shop and buy with a couple of clicks.

For those addicted to social media there is a whole virtual library of social scrapbooks to get lost in, even some with a heading of “Addiction”.