Geek and Poke Cartoon. Image Credit: Geek and Poke.

Screenshot of Pinterest on 6 May 2012.

Essentially, Pinterest is a social media photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage their images in a pinboard style. These image themes are often events, interests, hobbies and craft activities. Users can then add, “re-pin,” “like” and share images in a feed. Imagine it somewhat like a cross between Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr.

Users on Pinterest can upload, save, sort and manage images and other media content onto pinboard collections. The content also called “pins” are themed so that they can be easily found, organised, categorized, discovered by other users and posted onto other pinboards. Basically this is a social media platform where user generated content from the site, from the net or personal images can be added to other pinboards to be shared. The site can be accessed by adding “pin it” button to the desktop bookmark bar, “follow me” and “pin it” buttons added to websites or by smart phone applications.

It is one of the fastest growing social media sites and is a platform for sharing social media images in a way that other image sites have not been able to do. It also allows users to connect to Facebook and Twitter.

Last year, Time magazine listed Pinterest in its “50 Best Websites of 2011″ because of its ability to attract more than 10 million visits a week, and driving huge amounts of traffic to retailers.

In January 2012, comScore noted that it was the fastest site to achieve the 10 million unique visitor mark.

The content and ability to share events and images have made the site a hit with women. 97% of the site’s Facebook “likes” are from women. In fact the most popular themes are food & drink, do-it-yourself and crafts and women’s apparel.

So while the content may not be your cup of tea, it makes sense to familiarise yourself with Pinterest as it is an important social media networking site to be used to promote businesses, expand networks and even make money from it.

A recent study by market research leader Nielson has shown that women are more likely to engage in social media! In fact, women are more likely to create or update personal blogs and follow companies on social media sites such as Facebook, and have at least one social media profile. This confirms what was found in other studies, which found that women spend more time online than men.

A few reasons why this may be the case:

1. It is a well known fact that women are more likely to make decisions and hold the purchasing power within households so it should be no surprise that women are more savvy in regards to online marketing and purchasing. The report points out that women are more likely to be making purchases, but they are also more likely to be online on Twitter and Facebook.
2. According to a recent survey by Royal Pingdom, social gaming appeals to older women because these games are easier to play for shorter periods of time, are less intense, often free, less violent and do not require as much specialized equipment as traditional games. The ease of using basic social media sites and tools also appeal to the average laywoman.
3. Women are social creatures and like to share things. Social media is just another way for women to express themselves. Social media is just another way for women to stay in touch with friends and family or to network with like minded people.

Why else do you think that social media is being to be dominated by women?

Where to Post Your Status. Image Credit: Breaking Copy.

Social media marketing specialist, Mitch Joel examines how the evolution of the web might be anti-social in his TEDx talk at Concordia University in Montreal. It’s counterintuitive to what we think of the world wide web.

Do you agree?

• an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

In the internet age, it could be an image, video or other “viral” social media passed from one internet user to another. In this case, memes are not necessary harmful like viruses. Instead, they usually tend create pop culture phenomenons within a short amount of time. Some of these are endlessly entertaining.

Know Your Meme is an internet site dedicated to the viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, internet celebrities and that spread across the cyberspace at lightning speed.

See the case of Ridiculously Photogenic Guy, who was snapped running a marathon with perfect hair and smile, while everyone else looked tired and the way people generally look when they run for kilometers. Someone had commented that he was a Ridiculously Photogenic Guy, and that original photo has been made into a Meme with silly captions, generating thousands of hits on social media sites like Reddit, 9gag, and Twitter.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy meme. Image Credit: Know Your Meme.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. Image Credit: Know Your Meme.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. Image Credit: Know Your Meme.

The growth of Pinterest is nothing short of amazing. For instance, in January 28 this year, Pinterest got nearly 22 million visits—an increase by as much as 30 times compared to July last year!

But can Pinterest be of any relevance to your business at all? Is it possible for your business to benefit from the sheer practice of posting and organizing things that interest profile owners?

As a matter of fact, Pinterest provides for an excellent business opportunity—perhaps even better than the opportunities provided by Facebook and Twitter. After all, the core of Pinterest is to share things of interest to users. If anything, brands are the essential driving force behind Pinterest. For that reason, businesses should waste no time and get themselves into the third-largest social networking site with the following step:

1. Ask for an invitation. An invitation is necessary in order to open an account with Pinterest. So go ahead and ask for one!

2. Know your way around the site. Before creating boards and getting yourself started with all the pinning business, you ought to familiarize yourself with what pinning is all about in the first place, as well as the actions you can take: “pinning”, “re-pinning”, and “like”.

3. Start creating boards. By the time you’re familiar with how the site works, it’s time to create your own board that represents your products and services. Just take Target for example: its boards feature pins for clothing, baby items, food, and a lot of other things.

4. Download “pin it”. With this, users will be able to grab or pin anything from your website and place it in their own boards. This just about summarizes your principal goal of getting your business known  in the site.

5. Interact. Like any other networking site, it is absolutely important that you follow your fans and learn what other things they like. This will give you a lot of information about how to attract them further into your business.

The practice of requesting Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts is for employers to get an insight into employee behavior.

Obviously, there is a backlash with this behavior. People are disgusted and outraged by this intrusion of privacy.

While nothing on the internet is inherently private, the fact that job seekers are being asked to reveal personal information is like kicking someone when they are down.

This is not only happening with private firms, as candidates for state trooper positions in Virginia as well as athletes at the University of North Caroline in Chapel Hill have been known to monitor their employee pages.

While the illegality of the practice is up for debate, Facebook’s chief privacy officer Erin Egan has this to say on the controversial topic:

“In recent months, we’ve seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people’s Facebook profiles or private information. This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s friends. It also potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability…We don’t think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

Twitter Logo. Image Credit: Twitter.

A study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University has found that there are ways to make your tweets more credible to the public. How do you make what you are significant to others?

Twitter users only spend about three seconds reading a tweet so the perceived legitimacy of the person tweeting is important. Twitter is one of the few social media outlets where people do not follow their friends, family or followers, and instead follow people they do not know. So how do they judge if a tweet is credible?

According to the study, there are a few things that could increase the credibility of tweets. Here is a list of the top ten:

1. Post was retweeted by someone you trust
2. Author is a subject expert
3. You follow the author
4. Tweet contains a URL you clicked through
5. Author is someone you’ve heard of
6. Account has verification seal
7. Author often tweets on topic
8. Author’s tweets frequently include similar content
9. Author’s user image is a personal photo
10. Author is often mentioned and/or retweeted

And at the opposite end of the spectrum, here are a few things that could decrease the credibility of tweets:

1. Non-standard grammar and/or punctuation
2. Profile picture is Twitter’s default user image
3. User image is a cartoon or avatar
4. Author follows many users
5. Author’s user image is a logo