Why the Interest in Pinterest?

Sorry for the pun in the headline but i just had to put it in this article somewhere. So as Tech Crunch reported this week the social media website Pinterest, where users share images of things which they find interesting/useful/funny/cool/inspiring etc etc, has hit 10 million unique monthly hits in the US faster than any other standalone startup.

Pinterest is a site built entirely around the sharing of your interests (hence the name) and is wholely devoted to the ability to share your pins and to view those of others that are linked to yours. Why then, when people are continuing to protest against other Social Networks use of their "likes" etc are they flocking to another website where the sole purpose is to share this information with random people.

The answer is partly down to money. Facebook and Google give you information about your interests and likes to advertising companies in return for advertising money and they have been very succesful at doing it as shown by the recent high profile news regarding Facebooks impending IPO. People dislike the idea of them being "used" by companies to make money off them especially when it refers to the use of "private" information. Mostly however it is down to the difference between whom it is that is releasing the information. Most of us are happy to give our emails and phone numbers out to our closest friends as we get the control of the flow of information. If a third party (be it a company or even just a friend) was to be going around handing out our number to those same friends most of us would have some sort of a problem because suddenly we have lost the control of the information. this has been the problem for companies like Facebook with its well known issues with the suitability of its privacy controls and  its use of personal information as a revenue stream. Ofcourse with a company like Facebook we are expected to understnd that for continued use of facebook as a FREE platform we must as users be willing to give up certain liberties, this is something i am perfectly content with.

So where will all this leave Pinterest. Well if they wish to keep the current popularity then it will have to find a way of monetising the website without using user information. Advertising is the most likely with targeted ads based on companies and sponsored pages. But in the long run they just need to keep things simple, they have a website whos popularity is based on a single idea and i hope they keep it that way for the users sake.