The Masculine Side of Pinterest: an experiment

Pinterest just opened it’s doors to everyone, and because Ray hates it so much, I’m going to try it. Yes, I’m going to try Pinterest. I’ll give it a week for sure, then write some more about it. For now, I’ll give my initial impressions on what it can offer me, a 27 year old former Marine with a love for tech, cars, motorcycles and a passing interest in dressing decently.

I guess I’ll start by explaining how Pinterest works. Users pin pictures to the site, filed by category (which are listed to the right) or to specific boards. See, “pin” replaces “post” on Pinterest, hence the name. The pictures are what you see when you log in, or choose a category to browse. It’s how you attract attention to your post. When you click on a picture, it brings up the post, which includes all sorts of fun details, like who pinned or repinned it, who liked it, what boards it’s been pinned or repinned (reposted) to and if they used an app to do so. Very much like Twitter, but focused on the pretty-shiny-ooh-lala factor of pictures.

When you sign up, you are offered the choice of using your Facebook account, Twitter account or an email address. Once you submit your name and whatnot, you are forced to scroll down a never ending column of pictures with no context until you select 5 that represent your interests. I chose a classic Yamaha motorcycle, a new Lamborghini, a Windows Surface Tablet, a random smart phone and a cool watch. Remember, I’m trying to make this useful for me, not a chore. Once I got through that, I was presented with a home screen covered in pictures like you see above. It was, essentially, my bedroom wall as a 12 year old.

Scrolling through, I started seeing a few more “geeky” things, and checked out the Geek category. Ah, that’s better… mostly. See, Pinterest has a certain feminine feel and it’s not the design, it’s the content. Even the geek, car, tattoo, technology, etc pins are predominately female oriented. These aren’t project cars that people want to see rebuilt, they’re trailer queens that get taken out to be shiny but never driven over 30mph. The Doctor Who posts include such gems as Doctor Who themed nail polish. Nevertheless, I’ll keep fighting the good fight.

The Technology category is overflowing with last weeks roundup fodder. Yet, you can comment on posts pins, allowing you to notify people that Beats by Dre are not excellent. Still, it looks somewhat promising. The format certainly works. Similar to reddit in theory yet polar opposite in visual representation, Pintrest is all about you scanning a feed of pictures until something catches your eye. You follow multiple boards which consist of many people so you get the interests of many people, allowing you to customize your experience.

That is, unless you click “Everything” at the top and get bombarded with womens shoes and half-naked men holding Olympic medals.

I’ll be posting about my adventures with Pinterest on Twitter, so follow me @KevlarMenace. If you’re curious, I’m using the Windows Phone app Pinspiration (free) and I’ll have a review of it coming up.