Since moving into my new apartment in March, I’ve been working to make it feel like home sweet home. For the past five months, I’ve spent many evenings searching for prints, frames, fabrics, rugs and furniture to help transform my new digs one room at a time. As a result, the bookmarks in all of my browsers have grown a bit out of hand—until recently.

A couple weeks ago, I received an e-vite from a friend to join the Pinterest community. Haven’t heard of Pinterest? Co-founded by an alum of my high school (go Trojans!), Pinterest is a way to organize the beautiful things you find online by “pinning” images to boards created in your account.

The Pinterest Community
Beyond organizing items you find online, Pinterest also allows you to see what others in the Pinterest community have discovered. Similar to Facebook, you can friend and follow other Pinners, and much like retweeting, you can “repin” information they find especially pin-worthy. The repinned item displays on your board and gives credit to the original pinner with a link to the original source.  Additionally, you can “like” a pin, which is like adding the pin to your Favorites folder.

The founders of this site have also established a Pinterest Etiquette Guide to help maintain the integrity of the site as it grows and the community evolves.

How to Pin
Pinterest is still in its early stages, so you have to send a request or be invited by a member to join the Pinterest community. From the beginning, I was impressed with Pinterest’s aesthetics and ease of use. I’m not alone either. Check out this glowing review of Pinterest’s unique and personalized sign-up experience. Once your account is set up, just install the “Pin It” button to your browser and begin pinning!

I’ve only been exploring Pinterest and pinning items to my boards for a couple of weeks, but pinning items and checking out other boards has already become part of my daily social media routine.

Have you explored Pinterest? What are you pinning?

Read more blogs from SCG’s 41 Stories.

-Whitney McIntosh

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