What is Pinterest for?

It exists to fuck up search results.

I forgot it existed because some lovely person made an extension to block it ☺️

Whoever does their SEO is a genius but should also have been drowned at birth

It's a pinboard. You collect idea's in a visual way to create moodboards or visual collections of idea's.

I used to be a big fan and my daughter and wife still use it a lot when researching a project. It works really well but is cluttered with paid content these days.

My experience with Pinterest is:

• Search for some recipes and you click a link to Pinterest it takes you to a meta page with a lot of pictures but no recipe.
• While image searching you find a nice picture click on the link to Pinterest and it's gone, just use the cached image instead.

They took an existing real-world idea, made it a website, and then tried to microsoft it by locking people in, refusing to let others play without paying, and generally making every interaction suck. It's been quite a ride from "hey that's interesting" to "oh god - them again". I think the thrill lasted maybe the first six months they existed.

I try to avoid the site like the plague, have never really attempted to use it, and when the internet inevitably dumps me there is my search for something I've never found any value in it.

But I think the idea is that it's supposed to be sort of a brainstorming tool.

Think back to the days when physical magazines and catalogues were more of a thing. When you were planning or designing or working towards some goal you might gather up a bunch of clippings, pictures, articles, recipes, your own notes, sketches, and doodles, etc. and pin them up on a cork board (sort of a "vision board") or maybe put them in a book or folder or something so they were readily available for you to look at for inspiration or reference as you go about your planning.

I think that's what Pinterest was supposed to be. Sort of a place to save all your little inspirations and reference pictures for whatever project or goal you have in mind.

And I kind of suspect that for that purpose it does its job well enough (though I don't really get what benefit it has over a folder full of pictures and word documents, spreadsheets, etc. saved to your computer or phone)

And I guess maybe having a platform where you can share that sort of virtual vision board and get feedback on it and see what others are planning is maybe useful for some people's creative process.

But it's also kind of like glimpsing into someone's personal notebook full of their illegible handwriting, half-finished sketches and doodles, and made-up shorthand. It probably makes lots of sense to that person, but since you don't know what was going on in their mind when they put it together and it was never edited for someone else to make sense of, it might as well be the ramblings of a mental patient.

And since most of the rest of us only stumble onto Pinterest in search of a source for something - a place we can buy something, the recipe for food, an article or the context for a picture, a how-to guide, etc. it seems like a total waste of time because most people only share the picture and a couple quick thoughts or hashtags or whatever, it's basically useless.

I actually find it invaluable. I am constantly designing new products so I need a lot of inspiration. Google image search is too focused and I need broad strokes to start. I can type in a few keywords in Pinterest, find one image I like and click on it, then get a large amount of similar designs. I've used it for lots of stuff from a variety of unique knurling options on dials to flower knolling layouts for ad shoots. It's a better image search for my purposes.

I haven't used it in a while, but when I did I used it sort of as an idea / vision board. For instance, when remodeling the kitchen I created a board where I just pinned a ton of kitchen pictures that had things I liked. Sort of a way to group images together based on themes.

It gloms onto the mental capital around how the internet is supposed to be free and open. But if you make an account you can then download the images etc. When I did make boards and pin things it felt like I was just indicating to interested commercial parties the things I like. But it does show you a large amount of related images quickly which can be handy if you’re looking for something specific.

It exists to abuse and profit off search engine optimisation. More than half of most image search results are polluted with their results which forces you sign up to do anything useful with them.

The only time I encounter it is when doing image searches for normal things and it seems to exist to make it maximally annoying to search for and download images. If I ever end up on Pinterest it's just a guaranteed headache.

Increasing shareholder value, of course.

I agree with the other commenters, it is mostly awful, screws up image searches, and I've had the browser extension that blocks it from searches installed for years.

But I have also used it, so can partly answer your question. Basically, it lets you build image collections on topics, and has convenient (but also intrusive and data harvesting) extensions / apps that make it easy to add any image you come across online to one of your boards. In the past I've used these boards for home renovation, DIY projects, world building, D&D inspiration / mood boards to share with new players, etc. And as well as just gathering together the images you save, it's pretty good at suggesting similar images.

If it wasn't so awful as a site (the out of control SEO, demanding you're logged in, presumably vast data harvesting) I'd actually use it a lot more. But I generally don't, and I'm looking for an alternative. There's something called Hoarder that you can host yourself, which could be useful. But without the network effects of humans effectively tagging and linking millions of images, it'll sadly never be as good at suggesting relevant new images as Pinterest.

It's a social network version of browser bookmarks.

I use it for ideas and references. Back when I drew, it was a great source for models. Also nice for projects. They have a plethora of patterns for crafting, not to mention just straight inspiration if you're looking to design pretty much anything. I don't use it to just look at pictures, I go to it looking for something specific.

Killing the internet.

It has no other purpose.

It's the web version of a vision board where you cut out images and put them on a board. But it links to the source as well.

High too ATM, that's exactly what its for, images.

I was suprised to learn most teens exclusively use Pinterest for looking up images, as opposed to web searching.

it also has features like creating boards, for example you can "pin" images to your board, and others can see it. So people try collecting the most images or the rarest ones of a specific person or something else idk, to compete.

I hate the platform, because it puts the whole algorithm thing on images, essentially creating doomscrolling potential for what was supposed to be an image host & share platform. Also its a really fucking slow app & website. +ads, so I wouldn't ever use it anyways.

My d&d dm asked us (the players) to create pintrest pinboards with stuff relevant to our characters. Like clothing style, weapons, that kind of stuff. Never used it before...

It's for creating mood boards / inspiration boards

I use it for art insoiration and reference. Also recently inspiration for a new haircut

It's made to annoy people.

It seems, at least to me, that the Pinterest results have less AI generated imagery than, let's say, Google Images. I mean, of course there are AI images on Pinterest, but not so much as Google.

It kind of reminds me of a visual bookmark manager.

Some people will use it to gather recipes. They might even group some, like "Thanksgiving dinner ideas" or "new diet." When you do this, you can even get a little thumbnail that will make it easier to find later.

It's not limited to recipes. You can link a lot of stuff, like maybe tutorials on how to build a shelving unit. You could put it in a group called "organizing my garage," along with other stuff you want to do.

You might not even necessarily use it for links, maybe you have an idea for a costume or a picture you want to draw. You can find picture inspiration. Once you find a picture, it can suggest more you might like.

One can of course achieve this type of thing without Pinterest (I do just fine with my own system) but Pinterest does make it very convenient, especially for people that aren't as tech savvy.

Oh man if you like images of aesthetic mood board stuff you have not lived until you've let the algorithm take the wheel and fallen into a pin hole. It's quite stimulating.

You can totally get the images from Pinterest. I just inspect element and click through the 10 subelements but I think there are extensions and DuckDuckGo that can automate this.

I'm not entirely sure what people actually use it for, but I do regularly chuckle when I remember my (very manly man) father in law asking for help setting up his Pinterest account.

Tumblr from 2012 had an unparalleled hatred of Pinterest I know that much. Like far worse than their love-hate relationship with 4chan

I like using it to find recipes for stuff but that’s all I use it for tbh. And also just kind of organizing “aesthetics” that I’m going for when working on projects like dnd campaigns and such.

I use it to gather recipes, workout routines, pictures of cats, and cool artwork. I also have a "board" full of pictures of stuff from my childhood that I look at if I'm wanting some nostalgia.

I use it A LOT for work. Basically looking for real life images of the lighting application that I'm designing for to convey the intent to the client in a visual way.

I might also use it for art inspiration but not often.