Dudenhoffer, C. (2012) “Pin it! Pinterest as a library marketing and information literacy tool.” College and Research Libraries News, 73 (6), 328-332.crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/328.full Accessed 23/02/15
As the title suggests Pinterest is defined as an “information literacy tool”p328 later as a “collection of visual images’ p330
The purpose for using Pinterest was:
For “reaching out to non-traditional learners in an accessible and appealing way”p328 (what they mean by ‘non-traditional’ is not specifically defined although later mentioned are “different kinds of learners and learning styles, such as visual, auditory, etc.”p331
Endevoring to “make information literacy interesting and applicable to all students”p330
Other features and benefits
- Sorting and categorising of diverse material
- Sharing information, (it is publicly viewable)
- A research portal
- The visual representations allow for quick retrieval thanks to notation and tagging, p329
- for collecting material relevant to curricula to create classroom resources
- The interface allows for an “easy juxtaposition of ideas”p331
The main conclusions were that the introduction of Pinterest led to students developing “both traditional information literacy skills and visual literacy skills”p331 and that the juxtaposition of ideas and “ease of of accessing Pinterest as a visual aid provide excellent opportunities for critical thinking and discussion.”p331
Hall C and Zarro M (2012) Pinterest: Social Collecting for #linking #using #sharing, JCDL’12 Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital Libraries p417-418 ACM New York, USA doi 10.1145/2232817.2232919 accessed 01/03/15
Defining Pinterest as a “Social collecting website” that allows users to “annotate digital objects in their own personal collections”p417 through “collection, categorisation and representation of a digital object in a system that is accessible via the web”p417
That Pinterest in personal and public. Personal because collections are maintained using ‘idiosyncratic methods’ and public because these collections can be viewed by anyone (do you have to be a member to view??)
To explore what “social collecting”, they compare the features of Pinterest to more traditional library services because, “social collecting is indicative information organisation, use and sharing in a social web environment”p418
With a “user-centred perspective of organising or describing information resources in a digital library or website”p417
A system that allows users to “create and annotate surrogates of digital objects” p417 making it “easy to reuse and share images”p417, linking back to a source but not necessarily the original “as images may be used and reused several times on the web.”p417
It offers a demonstration of preference through; choice, inclusion, following, liking content and sending content to other members.
Through a system of indexing and abstracting, the process of choice is highlighted: “The Pinterest User is choosing an extremely small subset of objects from the Worldwide Web to collect, and some discrimination necessarily occurs”p418 These objects are then re-framed within a new context and a given a new narrative. Demonstrating a creative process.
These small sub-sets get re-pined by other Pinterest users and therefore they are choosing from an even smaller subset of objects, shrinking the pool of choice. Whereas those who pin from source are widening the pool.
All information chosen and then reframed by the user within a new context.
“The act of pinning is analogous to indexing and abstracting. The image is the surrogate the user chooses to represent her concept or object. Creating a pinboard and assigning it to a top-level category is analogous to defining a category in a hierarchy and placing items in it.”p418
Hall, C. and Zarro, M. (2012), Social curation on the website Pinterest.com. Proc. Am. Soc. Info. Sci. Tech., 49: 1–9. doi: 10.1002/meet.14504901189 accessed 01/03/15
A “social curation website” that combines ” social features and collecting capabilities”, (ibid) Pinterest communicates the metaphor of a being a pin board, to ‘pin’ visual links to web content in one place, for retrieval at a later date. Alongside the facility for this pinboard to be shared with and viewed by an online audience.
Participatory web – “Where users actively create, evaluate and distribute information” – leading to a “great increase in the quantity and variety of social annotation and user-generated meta data.”
Linder R, Snodgrass C, & Kerne A. (2014) Everyday Ideation: All of my ideas are on Pinterest. CHI 2014, April 26-May 01 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145.25556288.2557273 accessed 05/04/15
a visual medium of rich bookmarks used as a system for assemblage and appropriation, where objects are organised in a flow layout with objects aligned contiguously into columns.
Pinterest is a platform for everyday ideation, where ‘digital curators perceive themselves to be finding and and keeping information to form ideas.” p2411 Ideation is defined as “the creative process for generating ideas and exploring possibilities”p2411
“By everyday ideation, we mean an ongoing process in which curators look for, find, organize and return to meaningful information as a means of provoking and forming ideas that address practical and emotional needs.”p2411
Their participants reported using Pinterest to learn and combine ideas.
they identify curation as “an inherently creative activity.”p2412, and claim that the process of encountering new facts, concepts and ideas progressively increases one’s potential for realising creativity”p2411 That Pinterest allows creativity to be turned into an ‘everyday’ activity.
“Furthering engaging in learning and synthesis can transform everyday forms of creativity into more eminent ones”p2412
“Exercising creativity increases self-esteem and helps one learn to self-actualise”p2412 and “extrinsic motivation can foster creativity. For example, when a consequence is perceived as a bonus rather than a penalty, creativity may be positively impacted. the re-pin mechanism works as a consequential bonus to Pinterest users. It does not create a feeling of impending evaluation.”p2413 “re-pining accounts for 4 out of 5 pins”p2413
They observed that participants did not feel scrutinised as they pin and are more interested in the Pins themselves rather than where they came from”. p2416
“We argue that continued exposure to diverse content pinned by others perceived as ‘like me’ to a user encourages them to approach unfamiliar interests and try new things.”p2413
“We found that participants apply information-based ideation and creative thinking skills in seeking, collecting, analyzing and testing ideas from Pins”p2414
“The effects of social proof strongly influence a person’s perception, making unfamiliar activities seem achievable. In trying new things, people gain skills and expertise, key components for creativity”p2419
They observed that participants used the word ‘idea’ to describe the Pins they collected, meaning that “forming and presenting ideas is essential to how everyday ideators use Pinterest as a social medium of curation.” p2414 providing rich representations of many different ideas.
“The meaning and utility of these found objects change as people exercise creativity and invoke their ideas. Social perceptions of Pinterest help motivate everyday ideators, increasing their expertise and creativity.”p2417
“Repeated exposure to others Pins constitutes tacit social proof, making new goals and personally untested ideas appear achievable. p2416
“Participants used curation as a means to discover and articulate tastes and interests.”p2417 “People appropriate information to address life’s needs and use curation to plan, motivate and expand their interests.”p2418
“Pins posess visceral and informational value. For most participants a Pin’s image is most important. Images convey implicit information that is immediately understandable. p2419
“Participants reported taking fewer than five seconds to decide on what to pin. they rely on fast visual cognition when choosing and refinding.”p2419
Mittal S, Gupta N, Dewan P & Kumaraguru P. (2014) Pinned it! A Large Scale Study of the Pinterest Network CoDs’14 Proceedings of the 1st IKDD Conference on Data Sciences , pp1-10 http://precog.iiitd.edu.in/Publications_files/Pinterest-IKDD.pdf Accessed 21/05/15
Image based social bookmarking media, a promising conduit for the promotion of commercial activities.
Image based social network, interesting due to its rapid growth. Which they attribute to the imaged based nature of the service.
A service that is popular with commercial and non-commercial users
Interested in who uses it, and trying to predict gender through analysing user names. And privacy and security
Design was one of the most popular topics across users
5% of pins are uploaded by users as new images, 95% are pins from pre-existing web sources.
Zarro et al talked about how digital libraries and other organisations could take advantage of pinterest to create personal collections, incorporating their content, in their next piece of work they found that pinterest serves as infrastructure for repository building that supports discovery, collection, collaboration and publishing of content, especially for professionals.
Structure
User – identifiable by an avatar, user name, which is chosen by the user and can be anonymous and a optional description.
Board – collections of pins, named and organised by the user, arranged in a visual grid under the user information, identified by a name, a cover image and thumbnail images of the last few pins added by the user to that board.
Pins – the basic building blocks of the service, a pin is an image based digital object with a text based annotation attached, this annotation is editable by the user. Groups of pins are viewable through the grouping function of the board. Each pin also contains a link to the web source, from which is was taken, a pin it button, encouraging rep inning, a send button, so you can share this with another user, and a like button, to express interest without adding it to your Own pins.links to other boards from other users, that this pin features on, and recommendations to drive you into searching for similar objects. Plus a comments box
Social ties -follower /followee similar to twitter, repin share comment or like, similar to