Thing #7 aka Jenny finally gets a Pinterest page

First off: my mom loves--loves!--Pinterest.  I told her about it well over a year ago and she just dove right in, even though she believes herself to be not very tech savvy.  I think this is because she is an artist, crafty person, great cook, etc.  The visual aspect really appealed to her.  She is always looking for cool new ideas, and now that she is retired, she uses Pinterest instead of having a billion bookmarks on her computer.  It makes it easier for her to organize, since she has the visuals, and she adores it when other people repost her stuff.

I, myself, have resisted the siren call of Pinterest for a really long time.  Mostly because I would have to set up yet-another account...and because I was afraid of the time-suckage that might take place.  YouTube, wikipedia, etc. all have rabbit holes to fall into, and Pinterest is no different.

Anyway.  I finally set up my account...on my phone.  And like many things, it works just fine on my phone, but it is kinda annoying.  However, I do love that I can share my boards, see my mom's and friends' boards, etc.  I will definitely use it for recipe and project ideas (especially since I now have a fancy personal blog to help me keep track of my own recipes and projects!).

I pinned a few things and explored other people's boards, but decided to try to avoid falling too far under the spell while there are other Things to try...and only two weeks in which to finish.  :)

I also think it might actually be useful for work, especially when working on something visual like web redesign ideas or LibGuide designs that might inform changes to our template.  It might also be a great way to organize what I used to organize as plain book marks, like exhibits at other institutions (and ours, I suppose).  Finally, I might use it to organize which images from our Collections Online system I use for which webpages/LibGuides/featured items on the webpage.  In fact, that might be the best professional use of a non-professional tool that I've thought of so far in 23 things!  Since you can put comments and the link is in the metadata, it would be great.  And I could then share it with colleagues if they needed to know what was where for a patron, etc.

The one thing is that Pinterest is meant to be a social thing (repinning, etc.).  For most of my own professional things, I would want to only have private boards/pins and use them personally.  I guess those are called "secret" boards, huh?  

I hear that rabbit-hole of Pinterest calling.....

Oh, yes!  As for other options for similar apps/services: I have heard of an app called StumbleUpon.  It started as a search engine and is now more about communities of users sharing things related to common interests.  Like a more focused and world-wide Pinterest, I guess.  Also, I've seen that they have a new URL shortening service, sort of like bit.ly but called su.pr.  Haven't tried any of it, but wish someone else would so they could tell me if it was worth it.