Pinterest is white hot. Everyone is Pinterest-ing, covering pinboards with pictures of chicken parmesan, Reese Witherspoon’s hairstyles, and cats kissing rabbits.
Jewelry, home décor, vacation photos…pure fluff, right? Digital masturbation.
Think again. What some would call a massive waste of time was just given $26 million by venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz to play with.
But it’s not a fun little site just for playing around. To start with, here are some interesting thoughts on how to use Pinterest for small businesses.
Most important, Pinterest is becoming a great example of a successful self-curating community. So of course, everyone is speculating about the reasons for Pinterest’s massive success. The best combination of clear and complete came from Elad Gil.
But I’ll boil it down even further. Here’s why:
Spirograph, Play-Doh, Silly Putty.
These classic toys are just three examples of how folks enjoyably occupied their time back in the pre-internet days. Doesn’t get much more analog than that, but they were pretty revelatory when they came out.
Ridiculously successful, each one shared three basic qualities:
It’s fun, it’s easy to use, and it looks cool.
So is Pinterest.
Will Pinterest have the same longevity? Only time will tell. But Google, Youtube, and Facebook also share those three qualities, and their futures look pretty good.
No comments:
Post a Comment