Pinterest: On Virtual Collecting and Identity Display

I recently discovered Pinterest. A group of my young women students were gushing about it one day in class and urged me to check it out. I did, and I soon became hooked (though not necessarily for the same reasons they were). Pinterest is a collector's virtual paradise, and it takes the art and cultural practice of gathering, appropriating, collecting and circulating to a new level only made possible in digital culture.

Pinterest's basic model is to encourage users to browse a feed--a flow of captioned visuals that have been "pinned" (as if to a virtual bulletin board) by other users--and to "like" or "repin" the favored images on one's own board. In fact, one of the enticing features of Pinterest is that you can organize all those images that inspire you, or catch your fancy, into themed groupings and collections. In addition to grabbing and fixing images from the feed upon your own board, you can also be an innovator and introduce new images into the feed through the browser icon that allows you to "pin" any interesting image you come across online.

The generic Pinterest feed

The social part of Pinterest is that, like Facebook and other models, you can choose to follow the feeds of particular others, be they personal friends or just Pinterest trend-setters and trend-collectors. When you sign up, Pinterest asks about your interests and sets you up initially following a number of these "cool hunters" to which they've calculated you will find an affinity. Also affiliated with Facebook, Pinterest connects to your Facebook friends list. This allows you, one would assume, to share your collections-as-identity with friends in a more image-intense way.

The images on Pinterest tend to stereotypically be consumer-oriented, dominated by the interests of young adult women and focused upon home decorating, trendy fashions, and illustrated recipes for entertaining that might grace the pages of a womens magazine. Yet as Pinterest grows, I am seeing the aesthetic range of Pinterest images expanding beyond the commercial, advertising-type features to include images reflecting users' styles, interests, and aesthetic values. A growing body of art and art photography, photojournalistic images, handcrafted work, images of antiques and other material culture, travel photography, images of technological interest, and inspirational images (including text-based images) is appearing and circulating.

An example of a collection "board": this one of Antique Ceramic Tiles

The act of creating and naming one's collection of gallery-like "boards" and of carefully selecting those images that reflect one's own aesthetic tastes and style also provides a significant space for identity building and display. One might easily embrace the notion that "This array of chosen images reflects my style and conveys the type of person I am," leading to a degree of emotional fulfillment and self-expression.

For example, WSJ columnist Katherine Rosman writes about how Pinterest allows her not only to express her identity but also as an effective way to share that identity with others. "It hadn't occurred to me that such an online service also would be a window into me for my husband who sees me every day," Rosman writes. "But it is: Joe peeks in on my boards all the time, frequently surprising me with supplies for projects, ingredients for recipes, and gifts of stationery and books I've flagged. Recently, I added a board, 'Things My Husband Would Love.' I pin photos of vintage cars and golf courses. Pinterest has become for us an affectionate way of communicating."

A stamp collection: so "old school"! 

On Pinterest, one can collect pictures of stamps rather than collecting the stamps themselves. It's a virtual collection, which is much less expensive and easier to gather--not to mention easier to display and manage!--than a "real" collection. Collecting Oriental rugs or dolls or antiques can be a costly hobby, not to mention all of the space it requires for storing and displaying that collection. Pinterest allows you to virtually collect anything in the world--and no shipping charges are incurred, nor will you need to build an addition onto your house. Baudrillard would love this fine example of the simulacra.

In a related way, studying Pinterest also helps to crystallize Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus and cultural taste by providing concrete examples of how those tastes become embodied in tangible, concrete examples of material culture and in collecting or acquiring those evidentiary objects and images that illustrate one's cultural identity.

Here is an example of my own collection of Pinterest boards. Analyzing my own cultural habitus, the pinned items in "Feels like my style" may tell you that I have a love for things old and weathered, a bit dusty perhaps, and handcrafted. I am a bookworm, perhaps: there are several pinned images of overstuffed bookshelves from ceiling to floor signifying also a taste for cluttered but comfortable living spaces. There seems to be a tree motif throughout, tied to a fondness for handmade jewelry; decor such as patchwork quilts, cabinets built from converted barn doors, and collages of antique portraits and lace indicate an attraction to repurposed and pastiched "old stuff" rather than slick and manufactured new products. 

Other boards in my Pinterest collection exhibit a fascination for and appreciation of various cultures of the world, a range of architectural styles and natural environments, and an attraction to photographic portraits. One might surmise that I am a global traveler and that I would most likely have something of an inquisitive and adventurous personality that leads me to explore places off the beaten track.

Following Bourdieu, all of these personal affinities may tell you a good deal about my cultural positioning in American society. It may not be surprising to learn that I am an overly-educated college professor or that my first academic love is cultural anthropology or that traveling internationally and photography are passions of mine. Just as one reads a Facebook or Match.com profile to try to interpret and decode the semiotic clues about what kind of person is behind the profile, we can also read the Pinterest collections as a display of self and of cultural tastes, from which we can evaluate cultural positioning, social status, educational level, and more. 

Rug dealers at the San Francisco Rug and Textile Show, 2011, catering to collectors

Anthropologist James Clifford, in his book The Predicament of Culture (1988), writes about the significance of collecting: 

"Some sort of gathering around the self and the group--the assemblage of the material world, the marking off of a subjective domain that is not 'other'--is probably universal. All such collections embody hierarchies of value, exclusions, rule-governed territories of the self. But the notion that this gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, the idea that identity is a kind of wealth (of objects, knowledge, memories, experience) is surely not universal.... In the West, however, collecting has long been a strategy for the deployment of a possessive self, culture, and authenticity" (p. 218).

In America's individualistic cultural ethos, we each believe that our personal repertoire of tastes and interests contributes to the unique constellation of tastes that each of us possesses as an individual.  We tend to believe that no one else is just like us--it's the snowflake theory. And we enjoy that practice of trying to "figure out" who other people are according to their tastes and styles. But what *we* can decode, marketers can also decode--and marketers can utilize the stereotypical patterns leading to one's habitus to create our buying profiles. This makes me a likely target for a whole range of products and services catering to "people like me."

Pinterest's mission statement is "to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests." Ostensibly purely non-commercial, Pinterest urges users not to abuse the system: "Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion." 

Yet, as this Wall Street Journal article by Sarah Needleman and Pui-Wing Tam well illustrates, the start-up site has not yet settled upon a model for profit generation (monetization), and it has clearly already begun to be used by many companies, in various ways, as a "tool for self-promotion." It seems inevitable that it has become, and will continue to become, a way for commercial images to circulate in order to generate either publicity or sales for everyone from companies promoting their products to individual entrepreneurs finding a way to reach beyond etsy.com or eBay to broaden their customer base.


A social media blog, socialsonar.com recently advised about Pinterest: "Like with many social media sites, the point is to connect with your potential customers, not "shout" hard sales at them. ...So, for the right business, using Pinterest may be a new and interesting way to share content. If you aren't sure, start by asking your customers where they are spending their on-line social time. Then you will know where you should spend your time too." Another blog features a column by educational technology specialist Sarah Fudin on "How Pinterest Can Help Boost Your Career," who notes that "For January of 2012, Pinterest’s percentage of total referral traffic matched Twitter and surpassed other popular content-sharing sites like YouTube, Google+, Reddit, MySpace and LinkedIn." Fudin continues:

"Pinterest is now moving beyond its initial audience of stylists and hobbyists, and into the realm of professional development. For careers like education that often depend on visual information, Pinterest can be a valuable technology tool. Teachers can search for Pins that will help create lesson plans for serve as instructional aids. The sharing aspect of Pinterest makes it a great way to collaborate and communicate with other teachers, students, and parents. A Pinner can invite other people to contribute to a pinboard, providing a versatile environment for team-based projects. Students can create photo journals or reports on Pinterest boards."

Pinterest board of teacher resources

This last quote raises the idea of Pinterest as a site that may lend itself to collaborative knowledge building, a particular interest of mine. The site presents itself as a collaborative site, with etiquette guidelines "based upon collective input" from users. These include: (1) Be nice. (2) Credit your sources. (3) Avoid self-promotion. (4) Report objectionable content. (5) Tell us how to make Pinterest better.

Pinterest, for me at this particular moment, is an interesting blend of the link and photo sharing features of Facebook, the seemingly random web wanderlust of Stumble Upon, and the appreciative artistic community-building of Flickr.  Technology and social media statistics show that it has been one of the most rapidly-growing social media sites in recent history, and businesses are eager to find ways to catch a ride on its wave. Reggie Bradford of Vitrue (a social media solutions company) provides the following suggestions for ways "brands can leverage Pinterest" in a recent TechCrunch column:

1. Add Pinterest Content to Your Existing Facebook Presence.
2. Optimize Your Web Properties to Draw People to Your Pinterest Content.
3. Tell Your Existing Social Audiences About What’s Happening on Pinterest.
4. Make Your Pins Work Harder For You.
5. Arm Your Staff and Agency Partners With Tools to Help Them Pin Great Content.

"Pinterest is still in its infancy," Bradford writes, "and time will tell if it continues its rapid growth or plateaus. But it certainly exhibits the potential to provide visually engaging experiences for consumers that marketers can weave into their social communities. Brands can start simple, then evaluate for effectiveness along the way. Being able to experiment with new and innovative platforms is part of the fun and excitement of social. And brands should start experimenting today."

It will be interesting to see how Pinterest develops as it loses its innocence and moves into its monetization phase. Digital culture critic Nir Eyal notes that Pinterest represents a new breed of startups that further the industry dream of personized e-commerce and that Pinterest, in particular, represents the next generation of web-based media, what he calls the Curated Web.

Nir Eyal's concept of the Curated Web

The Curated Web, Eyal writes, is characterized by "a fundamentally different value to users than the social web. Whereas Web 1.0 was characterized by content published from one-to-many and social media was about easily creating and sharing content, from many-to-many, the curated web is about capturing and collecting only the content that matters, from many-to-one. Like all successive phases, the curated web is a response to the weaknesses of the previous phase. Users inundated with too much content are looking for solutions to help them make sense of it all. Curated Web companies solve this problem by turning content curation into content creation and, following the predicted trend line, they see unprecedented percentages of user participation. Each re-pin, re-blog, re-tweet, creates a curated, easy-to-use stream for future information to flow."

I find Eyal's concept intriguing and worthy of more thought and discussion. The concept of the curated web and of "taste experts" is one that has been long in coming, and is a significant aspect of Web 2.0 as well. The role of what we might call "trusted opinion advisors" (comparable to Eyal's concept of taste experts) has long been a factor in communication studies but has never been as significant as in today's social media, especially for that growing percentage of the young population who only read or view media as it is filtered through, recommended, and passed along by their friends and others whose opinions they respect. The role of friend-filtered news, images, and other information is becoming increasingly important, and feed-based sites like Pinterest are built upon this principle.