sprawling virtual pegboards of wedding
dresses, handmade jewelry, craft
projects and food porn haven't
changed dramatically. They're just
easier to manage.
The popular link- and photo-sharing
website has rolled out an update, one
offering people simpler navigation and
new ways to arrange their boards to
fit their needs. Although the
haphazard spirit of Pinterest remains,
the site is much less overwhelming.
I wasn't a Pinterest user before, so
the redesign gave me a chance to take
a good look at the site for the first
time. Before that, I had refused to be
sucked into yet another form of social
media. I figured I didn't have much
use for it.
In the months since I started testing
out Pinterest's new look, though, I've
found the service helpful in organizing
and sharing my continually expanding
recipe collection. And it's fun to check
what other people around the world
are looking at and to see which
strangers choose to follow me or
respond to what I'm sharing.
Although it is not a replacement for
Facebook or Twitter, and doesn't
pretend to be, it is a beautiful and vast
world with more than 25 million users
around the world.
For those who have never used
Pinterest, the free site lets people
"pin" pictures from websites they
want to share on online peg boards.
You can choose to share the boards
with just a few close friends or the
entire Pinterest world. Others can
comment on the boards and pins,
"like" them or repin items on their
own boards.
The result is an eclectic mix of millions
of boards spanning just about as many
topics. Although it doesn't offer as
much of a chance to communicate and
debate the way Facebook and Twitter
do, Pinterest is an interesting and
often beautiful supplement to those
social media networks.
Pinterest's recent redesign is intended
to cut down on clutter and make the
site easier to manage, without
drastically changing its look. The new
look continues to evolve. Most of the
changes are very subtle, and some
have been tweaked or reversed
already, helping Pinterest avoid the
kind of backlash that Facebook has
weathered in the past. Pinterest
promises even more updates in the
weeks and months ahead.
One of the most noticeable changes so
far is Pinterest's move to larger pins,
so you get four rather than five items
per row. The site looks cleaner and
less overwhelming because you don't
see as many items on the screen at
once. Much of the text previously
found on Pinterest boards is smaller or
gone. Menus have been streamlined.
What impresses me most about
Pinterest - and also what drove me
crazy - is its vast variety. Although
there's no shortage of boards devoted
to food, clothing, gadgets and home
decor, there are also ones devoted to
obscure topics such as doors, hockey
goalies and the character Daryl from
the TV show "The Walking Dead."
Some boards are very artistic and
personal, while others, like mine, are
more practical than pretty. The
possibilities are endless, and so is the
potential for wasting time - another
reason I held off on joining for so long.
Basically, whatever you're obsessed
with, there's something on Pinterest
for you.
For me, that's food.
I have hundreds of food-related sites
bookmarked on my work and home
computers, plus my iPhone and my
iPad. They cover healthy recipes
geared toward using up ingredients
from my weekly farm share, tips for
cooking a filet mignon and lists of New
York restaurants with the best ramen
and pizza. Other people have shared
everything from the most ornate
wedding cakes to those old-fashioned
casseroles held together with canned
soup.
Pinterest became a handy way to
organize all that. First, I set up a
Pinterest board simply titled
"Recipes." That quickly spawned
separate boards for easy meals,
desserts and New York City
restaurants. Although they pale in size
so far to many of the countless other
recipe boards out there, I find myself
adding a couple things every day as I
browse Twitter, Facebook and, of
course, other Pinterest boards.
The boards also serve as a handy way
for me to share recipes. Want my go-
to red velvet cake, mac and cheese
and turkey chili recipes? They're all on
my Pinterest page. It also gives me
easy access to my recipes when I
need them. Rather than emailing
myself links to recipes that I've
bookmarked on my office computer, I
can just pin them to my board and
open up it later on my iPhone as I
walk through the grocery store or on
my iPad as I stir something on the
stove.
After just a few months, some of my
boards have grown pretty large. The
new, less cluttered version of
Pinterest helps me find what a need a
little faster.
The activity feed, which details who
likes and repins your pins along with
other information, is in the process of
moving to a drop-down menu on the
right-hand side, clearing more space
for the pins and their often beautiful
photos. Its content is expanding as
well. Notifications go back further in
time than what users previously saw.
Filtering boards and pins by topic, such
as "Art," "Food & Drink" and "Geek,"
is now easier, too. Instead of one long
list dropping down from the middle of
your page, the categories fall from the
upper left in three shorter columns.
It's a simple change that makes the
list less daunting to read through.
Meanwhile, all of the profile and
account settings have been
consolidated in a dropdown menu on
the right.
A plethora of new information also
pops up now when you take a close-up
look at a pin. To the right of the pin is
a mini version of the board it came
from, which you can scroll through.
There is a mini board showing other
pins from the same website, so you
can discover related recipes, for
instance. Below all of that is a
collection of pins from people who
pinned the pin you're looking at. It's a
way to discover material from like-
minded people. It's a lot of content on
one page, but surprisingly
manageable.
Pinterest has also boosted its search
capabilities, so that when you start
typing something in the search box
located in the upper-left corner of the
page, a list of suggested words
appears below it. That's helpful if you
don't know exactly how to spell
something.
But some popular features have also
been eliminated. Gone is the site's
"originally pinned by" feature, which
showed which user was the first to pin
a certain item. But Pinterest notes
that many users have requested its
return. I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Based on user feedback, Pinterest has
already brought back other features,
including one that allows users who
have just pinned something to look at
related pins or go straight to their pin
by clicking on its "see it now" button.
What makes Pinterest different from
other social media services is that it's
not so much about posting your
opinions or even letting your friends
know about what's going on in your
life. Instead of creating new content,
it's about sharing and organizing
what's already out there, preferably
content that's attached to cool photos.
You get a beautiful visual experience
and links to just about everything
online right now.
If that's something you're interested
in, you might want to give the new
and improved version a shot. Just
don't spend too much time at the
office looking at recipes for 1950s-
style casseroles made with cream-of-
whatever soup. It's 2013, after all.
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