Twyste

My first thought when I heard about Pinterest was that it sounded like such a girlie site, which isn’t a bad thing for me because I’m a girl. However, for a guy, it seems like it would be harder to say “hey, be sure and follow me on pinterest” without images of cute little do it yourself bows somehow being involved. Here’s the thing, though… there’s a TON of stuff on pinterest. And, there’s non-girlie stuff. Lots of it. So, I was trying to think of non-girlie names for a more male-focused version of the site… “Nail it” and “Nuts and Bolts” are all I came up with though and, for obvious reasons, those haven’t been adopted. Sorry guys, for now you’re going to just have to be secure in your manliness and give a Tim Allen grunt as you say “check out my Pinterest boards.”

For those of you who have never visited the site, take a look at this listing of categories to browse!

There are A LOT of categories and I didn’t even show you the page of stuff between “F” and “P” …I really didn’t think you needed to see three screenshots of a table of contents. Anyway, my point in showing you those screenshots from the Pinterest app was so that you could see that the range of choices in categories is HUGE! You can go take a look yourself by clicking here or if you want to see my little collection of “pins,” click here.

My plan here, though, isn’t to give you a whole rundown on the website, but rather to let you know that the Pinterest app is pretty cool… and FREE, which makes it even better! As you could see from the screenshots above, at the bottom of the app’s main page, there are the following icons: following, explore, a camera icon, activity, and profile. The one I use the most is explore. From there you can look at any of the categories you like and repin, like, or comment on any of them. Any of this you do will show up in your profile, which you can view by tapping the profile icon at the bottom of the page. There you will find a view of all the latest “pins” by you and the people you follow (think of it kind of like a visual Twitter feed?). Below is a snippet of what I see when I look at my profile page with the Pinterest app.

If you just want to see the stuff that’s being pinned by the people you follow then, guess what, you tap the follow icon (it’s clever that way). You use the camera icon to add a picture of something to your board, along with any comment, link, or note you want to include. It’s very straightforward and lets you choose which board you’d like to pin it to or if you’d like to create a new board for your item. You can also add items to your boards from within Safari, but it’s a little trickier to do and involves a little cutting and pasting into your bookmarking set up. It isn’t hard, but too much to explain in this post; they’ve done a nice job on the app of including the instructions in the account section (it says “install bookmarklet” and walks you through the steps).

The activity icon brings up a list of any times your pins have been liked or repinned. I don’t care about this feature, because I am making my boards as visual reminders for myself not as anything else. Do any of you know a reason why maybe I should care or use it more?

The best thing about Pinterest in general, and in this app, is that when you tap on any of the pictures, it will show you a full screen image of that picture along with the link that goes with it just below. It makes it a pretty slick interface for saving your ideas. You can quickly peruse your appropriate board for what you want (e.g., valentine’s day ideas), then click on the image/link and go to the site where you can purchase, get instructions for, or just admire whatever it is you pinned. You can also comment on people’s pins, share them on Facebook, Twitter, or email, or save them to your camera roll.

There is a link at the bottom of this post to a different post listing a number of ways in which Pinterest as a whole could be improved and I tend to agree with a lot of the suggestions. However, all in all, the Pinterest app does what I need it to do. What do you all think? Also, if you need an invite to Pinterest, let me know and I’ll have them send you one. Yes. I am that connected.

Related articles

• 30 improvements Pinterest should make in 2012 (agbeat.com)
• If You Like Pictures…Pinterest (newenglandsnarrowroad.wordpress.com)