Have you started pinning yet? Whilst initially dubious about using Pinterest, I’m now hooked. In fact I‘d say that Pinterest is the most addictive web service yet. Pinterest’s growth has been staggering, even in what many would call an overly social era. Surrounded by Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., Pinterest has really made a name for itself.

So what is Pinterest? It’s quite simple. Imagine if Flickr and Twitter had a child together that combined the image sharing of Flickr with the social functionality of Twitter. Users can upload and share pictures with their network. It might sound a little pretentious, but Pinterest is an incredibly time efficient vehicle for sharing, commenting and simply “liking” something that a friend, colleague or contact has shared.

A new Engauge white paper breaks down the make-up of the average Pinterest user and shows that the end result of less reading is more of a focus on content curation than creation.  This whole “curation” phenomenon amazes me. As the white paper puts it, “People stare into a fire hose of information every day, and it’s having an impact. They’re actively seeking ways to not only filter and organize what they find, but also to less stressfully consume more content. That is the behaviour Pinterest exploits.” The timing of that trend, combined with a stunning design when Internet users are focusing more on visual than text, has allowed Pinterest to explode in popularity.

Pinterest is the hottest new entrant in what’s become known as the Interest Graph, An interest graph is a digital map that says, “This is what I like.” For example if you see that I follow Bill Gates on Twitter, that doesn’t tell you if I know Bill Gates, but it does tell you a lot about my interest in Microsoft or Philanthropy. Interest graphs are generated by the feeds customers follow (e.g. on Twitter), products they buy (e.g. on Amazon), ratings they create (e.g. on Netflix), searches they run (e.g. on Google) and now their pins.

The initial use case for elearning is in self authored elearning. See an image on that blog you read? Then Pin it and use it as a visual reference when later curating your content.  As more social & collaborative tools are adopted in the education and corporate environments, data related to the interactions and activities within these networks will increasingly be collected and analysed to help understand and measure the effectiveness of social and collaborative learning. Pinterest and other Interest Graph based technologies are just beginning to scratch the surface. Technology has become a form of self-expression. What we use and how we use it says everything about us.