IF you are a real estate professional using Pinterest, or have any tips or questions, please check-in via the comments. (Add links? Yes!)
What is Pinterest ?! 
A VISUAL tool ...
trying to describe Pinterest is like trying to tell someone what a strawberry tastes like, just try it!
It may take just a bit to wrap your mind around it, but as soon you begin to use it, it becomes very easy, yet very powerful, as a visual tool for collecting, saving, storing, organizing, curating, sharing, and discovering stuff you see and like on the web.
You may or may not have heard of Pinterest. If not, you soon will. I just discovered Pinterest this week.. I'd been hearing (or reading) it mentioned for awhile, for a few months or so ... but never took the time to look into it, until this week, Wednesday. Now, It's only Friday, and I am so very impressed, and infected, I had to share this on ActiveRain!
Pinterest users have skyrocketed from 50,000 (December 2010) to 1 million (in August 2011) to 12 million (in February, 2012.) WOW! It could be the next big thing? Pinterest is growing a rate of more than a million new users per month... as of mid-February, 2012. Not bad, for a start-up. Pinterest is based in Palo Alto, CA.
- "Nearly 6 out of 10 users are women aged 25 to 44," Mashable reports. So, it's not just for geeks, or high school & college students... unlike the beginnings of some other social networking tools.
- Ian Shafer writes: "Pinterest’s growth rate recently has been staggering, according to a recent post from Hitwise. And it’s referring a ton of traffic to retailers — even more than Google Plus and Twitter."
Why use Pinterest?
I've been exploring Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Imgur, Opez, and other micro blogging, and simple sharing, social website tools, for personal and small business use, over the past year or two. Choosing one new tool every few months to discover, experience, dissect, evaluate, and understand. Finding the competitive advantages, disadvantages, and best uses for real estate agents, small local business professionals, or family photo sharing and social network use is my goal.
Pinterest may be the newest, simplest, most elegant, yet powerful and useful tool of them all... for organizing and displaying and annotating and sharing visual things, visually.
Yes, there are some themes for Tumblr that could make something a bit like Pinterest, but they are not nearly so easy and so powerful — Pinterest itself is going VIRAL, now.
OK, what is Pinterest, & how to use it? 
Pinterest is a new way to organize/ store/ post your bookmarks to web-pages, and to share them. Also, to discover stuff others like that are similar to your likes. Because of the social sharing, and the Likes, it becomes a tool that may also be used for marketing.
A web-bookmark is now a Pin. A folder is a Board. Each web-page MUST have a noteworthy image: photo, diagram, video, etc. to use as a visual label.
You can create your very own Pin-Boards, with your own topics, or titles, like labels on boxes or albums of photos.
Then, you Pin things (using a photo as a key link) from any web-page, or your own image files, for photo sharing!
{Other users can browse your Boards, your Pins, and then like or re-pin them on their boards... Like shared, visual, Social Bookmarks.}
Click on a board to see its items, click on an item (aka Pin) to see more details, and then click on the pic to go to the original source, hopefully. (If you don't get the source, you can always try tineye.com to help find it.)
Each board has a subject category (from a list of about 30 or more built-in topics, such as: Architecture, Art, DIY-Crafts, Travel, Products, Men's Apparel, Women's Apparel, Science & Nature, or Other, etc....)
You assign your own titles to each of your boards, which you put it into one of those built-in categories.
Boards can be like Projects, Locale-Lists, Wish-Lists, Photo albums, Book-lists, Movie-lists, Topic-logs, Food/ Drink/Recipes, or an "electronic junk drawer" for a bunch of your favorite web links, indexed by a memorable thumbnail image from a web-page, each under a topic-title-heading that you make.
Whatever you like, or want to put into a grouping, Pin-It!
You must also put a caption, or some brief notes (a few characters, a word, or up to a few hundred characters) under each Pin. Also, you can type @username to mention other users in the caption. When you Re-Pin something you see on Pinterest that you like, you may use the old title from the last user, or enter your own, or edit/add to theirs. It's up to you. It's your pin.
You can choose to share your PinBoards on your Facebook timeline (wall) or not.
You can choose to share your Pins on your Twitter blog, or not.
When you sign up, Pinterest may use your Facebook or your Twitter profile picture, automatically. You can change it later, if you want. The profile picture is also your thumbnail/ icon/ avatar image label. Pinterest joins you with your friends who are already on Pinterest, automatically.
How to Begin to Explore Pinterest?
Start out by exploring two or three of your favorite categories, here is a partial list, click a few links:
... those show you Pins which are indexed by the category assigned by users to their boards where they put the Pins.
| Or, to see what's popular, right now, on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/popular/ .... also Popular Videos: http://pinterest.com/videos/ Or, check out what someone has pinned on their boards, to see how it's actually used: (stats below are as of 2/15/2012.)
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Want to get started?
You need an invitation to join Pinterest. If you request one from Pinterest, there is a long waiting list. If you are invited, you can get in as soon as you accept the invitation. Tip: Ask a friend to invite you.
Your Pinterest LOGIN is your EMAIL address (or your USERNAME) Usually, you choose your user name as your own name or your company name, for branding. The URL for all your Pinterest Pinboards will contain your UserName, such as you can see above. It must be unique among Pinterest users.
You MUST link your Pinterest account with either your Facebook or your Twitter account. They are trying to make sure that only REAL people are enrolling, and to facilitate sharing outside of Pinterest, to bring in more new and returning users.
For a business, you can use your logo as your avatar/ icon/ profile pic. Profile pics are from about 100x100 px to about 180 x 240 px (scaled) ??? Pinterest seems to use the top part as a small square icon-avatar-image-tag for your posts.
Lastly, you need to install the Pin-It bookmarklet into your web-browser bookmarks bar ... the magic button that will Pin a web-page onto one of your Pin-Boards with any large-enough image from the page, into your Pinterest account.
W A R N I N G : Pinterest can become very addicting...
Also, be willing to explore outside your circle of friends and immediate interests. The danger in these social network sharing tools is we can become isolated (marooned?) unto our own small island, one we create for ourselves. Step outside your territory...
Guideline: "Try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion." So, you can make a board for each town or locale, or listing, and also make boards for your other personal interests. Express anything you care about.
Pinterest = Home & Hearth, and therefore Real Estate?
Who uses Pinterest? — According to Experian Hitwise:
"Boomers and Boomerangs are the group most likely to visit, particularly the Pinterest website (comprising over 10% of visits). This group of consumers is characterized as baby boomers and young adults who are heavy web users who spend time on house and garden, sports and fitness, and family-oriented websites. This information is useful to companies who wish to target their content to be “pinned” by Pinterest users."
So, it looks like prospective Buyers and Sellers, especially during DIY, leisure, or hobby time, will be on Pinterest?
How will it evolve? How would curators be monetized? Will there be advertising opportunities? Time will tell.
Reports from retail sector indicates more hits from Pinterest than from some of the big guys... Check the links below.
What could go "viral" on Pinterest? Anything with a high visual appeal.
Read more about 
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... Pinterest Etiquette <== Official tips
How to Use Pinterest for Your Small Business <== link to Intuit's Small Business Blog
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:: See also, PINTEREST statistics (click the pic below, a link to hitwise) ::
Share and Enjoy! If you want an invite, let me know.
Found these after writing the above. Good links about Pinterest, How-to, and Real Estate Marketing...
Updates:
Brad Andersohn : ActiveBrad "Z" Blog : Posted on 02/12/2012
Pinterest - A Social Cataloging Community - A good visual summary, and good comments... lots of discussion.
Please leave a comment here, before you rush over there! Thanks...
Helpful stuff for Pinterest beginners:
- Where is it on Pinterest? Posted in pinterest
San Jose Mercury News, 2012.03.03, front page news:
... more to come ... please check back ... and see comments below, subscribe ...
Found on Pinterest:
From lifehacker.
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George Fanucci |
Newly hooked on Pinterest! 2/14/2012 |
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