Very Pinteresting

published online: 4/29/2012

Social network allows people to visually bookmark website finds, get and share ideas with other pinners.

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By CRAIG T. NEISES
cneises@thehawkeye.com

Her daughters are grown up – one is married – and away at college, yet Becky Ruberg’s need for craft ideas and projects to engage teenagers hasn’t abated.

As assistant youth librarian at the Burlington Public Library in charge of services for teens and tweens, it is her job to come up with engaging programs for the too-old-for-storytime set to entice them into the library.

Enter Pinterest, the social network that works like a virtual pinboard, where people can clip and save things that interest them.

Unlike the bulletin board in a craft room or on the side of the refrigerator, items pinned by users of Pinterest are searchable and sharable by a user base of nearly 20 million people.

According to a recent report in USA Today, the two-year-old Pinterest is the third-most popular social network, following Facebook and Twitter.

More than just being full of things to look at and pass along, whether it be political views or family photos, Pinterest invites action.

In addition to her job, Ruberg uses Pinterest to find recipes, craft ideas and projects to share with her girls and to help with her volunteer tutoring. Bits of humor go onto a board labeled “Giggles.”

On a recent visit home by her older daughter, Stephanie, they “did nothing but Pinterest stuff.”

“We just had a Pinterest day and played,” Ruberg said.

Kristy Ford of Fort Madison also is, as Pinterest users are known, a pinner. The Hy-Vee pharmacy worker and owner of a home-based sewing shop joined Pinterest last fall after attending an event at Baxter Vineyard in Nauvoo, Ill.

“I’m always looking ways to broaden my horizons,” said Ford, who uses the network to get ideas for her business, and to gauge what’s popular – or becoming that way.

Seeing what other people are doing helps her to not get stuck making only what she likes. Pinterest helps affirm those choices, but also offers new or different ways of thinking.

Since joining in October, Ford said she has been able to incorporate ideas from the site into not only her work but her home, where she lives with her 2-year-old daughter and her boyfriend. Those finds have helped inspire landscaping and decorating efforts at home. And with an eye toward expanding her efforts as an artisan into yard art, Ford knows she’ll find plenty of project ideas for that, too.

“You find any number of things on there,” she said. “It’s incredible.”

For instance: A loaf of bread that, when sliced, looks like a panda bear.

“Who thinks of that stuff?” Ford said.

Ruberg said she joined Pinterest about two months ago, after about three months spent looking over the shoulders of her boss, Angie Pilkington, the library’s youth services director.

“She’d show me something cool, and I’d say ‘How’d you get that?’ ” Ruberg said. “And she’d say, ‘Pinterest. Aren’t you on Pinterest?’ ”

It wasn’t long before Ruberg got her own account on the social network, which required an invitation to join. Would-be users can go on the site, Pinterest.com, and request an invitation, or can be invited by a friend who already has an account. Pinterest accounts can be linked to Facebook and Twitter, though Ruberg does neither.

She likewise doesn’t send out lots of invitations to people she knows.

“I don’t want to spread my addiction,” Ruberg said, only half-jokingly. She held off getting her own account so long because “I knew if I jumped into it, I would get way in.”

Ford said she keeps her Pinterest finds off her Facebook profile, but does have her Pinterest acccount linked with the Facebook page she has for her business.

Besides looking for things she can do at work or home, Ford looks for things that simply interest her.

Like classic cars.

As she plans for teen- and tween-oriented activities for this summer’s Summer Reading program at the library, Ruberg has found a valuable resource in Pinterest, where she has found a number of glow-in-the-dark project ideas to fit the reading program’s theme. Likewise, when she organized a live event based on the game Angry Birds, the pigs, birds and catapults were made using – or based on – plans found on Pinterest.

When she needed centerpieces for a volunteer breakfast, she found a do-it-yourself pinwheel project. She melted pieces of crayon in oven in silicone baking mold to make multi-colored crayons shaped like little men.

And she is working on a Minute to Win It event, based on the NBC game show where contestants win prizes by successfully completing simple yet challenging stunts. The how-to guideline she is using came from Pinterest.

Ruberg said her favorite kinds of pins are those that link back to step-by-step instructions, instead of just a finished project.

All together, Ruberg said she has probably tackled 30 different projects based on Pinterest finds. And not all work as advertised. Specifically, the homemade, vinegar-based weed killer fell short of doing much more than brown the edges of the leaves on weeds she treated with the mixture.

The cookies and lemon bars made from recipes on Pinterest turned out better. And Ruberg is looking forward to trying out an idea for storing open bags of chocolate chips that involves cutting the top from a wide-mouthed plastic water bottle.

Similarly, Ford looks forward to trying out a recipe that includes bleach, Borax, laundry detergent and dish detergent that is advertised as a way of getting even whiter whites in the laundry.

To Ruberg, Pinterest is a great alternative to creating bookmarks in a web browser. Pins and boards are just as customizeable and sortable as bookmarks, but they are visual instead of being in list form, which makes it easier to go back and find a specific thing.

Pinning an image or web page to a board on Pinterest is as easy as clicking a link and choosing a board to put it on.

Similar to Twitter, everybody’s feed is public, meaning it is possible to get ideas from people a user has never met. Ford said she has connected with people she knows who also use Pinterest, but with people all across the country, too.

And like Facebook, users of Pinterest can choose what topics they want to see in their feeds. They can follow all the boards for another user, or just specific boards that match an area of interest.

“Everybody has different interests, and it’s fun to find people who have the same likes,” Ford said.

The longer she is on Pinterest, Ruberg said, the more she has been able to separate what she wants to see from the stuff she doesn’t.

Categories of boards cover about every interest a person could imagine, with architecture, food and drink, men’s apparel, travel and places and weddings and events being but a few. There even is an “other” category to serve as a catch-all for topics that don’t fit any of the others.

Boards also can be created with multiple users, so people in a group all could add items.

One favorite project helped earn Ruberg a degree of cool she might not have otherwise. Attending the midnight opening of “The Hunger Games,” wearing a homemade shirt featuring a mockingjay pin as worn by heroine Katniss, teen girls who saw her immediately asked where she got the shirt.

Later, she saw those same girls wearing their own versions of the same shirt.

“If a teenager copies your clothes,” Ruberg said, “you’re cool.”