Why Pinterest needs you

I've been spending a bit of time with Pinterest. A friend warned me of the danger of doing so: it's rather a visual vortex. One intriguing looking photo leads to a slew of others and before you know it you've pinned and followed hundreds of posts and digital cork boards and half a rainy day has disappeared.

I can't see myself idling away hours on a sunny day - Pinterest doesn't say anything; it just shows you stuff. The appeal of Pinterest is that it's all lovely stuff. Beautiful homes, perfectly styled hair and fashion, cute pets and admirably well executed home crafts. There are photos and paintings too, along with some shining examples of architecture and product design.

Pinterest began as a closed shop, open to crafters and bloggers and anyone with an established web presence who would recognise how sharing boards of beautiful things might catch on. The social sharing site is now in a loose 'invite only' mode but actually has more than 18 million users and is soon set to become mainstream. It's not quite Facebook yet, but it shares some of that site's attributes and works directly with it, as it does with Twitter.

Twitter's similar, in that it offers an instant means of sharing items you like. With Pinterest, it's about the pictures rather than clever words. Perhaps recent Facebook acquisition Instagram is a better example. Once something's 'pinned' it can be seen forever (unless you unpin it, of course) on your Pinterest board.

You can pin video as well as photos, so there's scope to pin 'funnies' and all sorts that you might previously have shared on Facebook but that disappear off your page once a few more posts appear in your Timeline. I recently berated Videojug for its not always funny funnies. Get them on Pinterest and let the world decide.

It's this sort of engagement (and that Videojug and Vimeo do within their own environs) that Pinterest desperately needs. It could be a cool place to hang out, but it's dominated by photos of wedding dresses and cute designer things for kids. It needs rescuing from its saccharine coating and to be given some balls. 'Bloke' stuff, punk stuff, not quite so comfortable to look at stuff.

Corkboards use pins for a reason, so you can jam them in with a thumb and show the world that 'this' is what's worth looking at. Duh!