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This infographic is great, and surprise surprise, I found it on Pinterest.

I had heard of Pinterest about a year ago – but heard it was a place where older women shared recipes – so I wasn’t sure it would be of use to me since I can barely cook as it is. Of course, it being a new social media outlet meant I needed to check it out, anyway. I had trouble making an account (found out it was an issue with Google Chrome that was stopping me) so I kind of forgot about it for a while until the buzz started to pick up again. After downloading another browser I was finally able to get set up on there (follow me!), and at this point you can probably learn more about my taste and interests by going through my boards than by hanging out with me in person.

Lucky for me I realize my time is already spread in too many directions as is, so I seem to have taught myself to close out of Pinterest most of the time before I get sucked into the main page’s never ending stream of cool things to look at. When I do get sucked in, it turns into an hours long adventure of pinning and finding new ideas, and it becomes a complete (but wonderful) distraction.

If you are trying to use your time to create, it can be a nightmare, because it will easily consume any and all free time if you let it. But it is also an incredible place for inspiration. I’ve heard it called ‘Tumblr for women’ and I can see how that could be accurate. What eventually got me to like Tumblr was the visual nature of it, but the way everything fades away so fast – and the inability to categorize and board out themes like you can on Pinterest – makes me feel my time is better spent on the latter.

With Pinterest I can go to any of my boards and see in one quick scroll, everything that I’ve found relevant/beautiful/interesting related to a certain topic, right there, in a glance. It’s simple, intuitive, and essentially works as an online dream board and visual bookmark you can add to and easily change, forever. It grows with you over time.

The only thing I don’t like about it? No ability to make your boards private? What’s with that? Some of us don’t want the world to know we have a board dedicated to pictures of Ryan Gosling in his underwear, thx. (I don’t have such a board, mostly because there are no privacy settings!)

As the graphic shows, it is very much female dominated, which doesn’t surprise me as I’d heard that all along, but after being on it, it shocks me in that people always talk about how men are visual creatures moreso than women. Pinterest is the most visual social media network in existance, so, where are all the men?

(I’m desperately waiting for the social sharing plugin I use to add the Pinterest button, if you’re wondering why you don’t see it below!)