Well, I’ve done it. I’ve finally gotten myself sucked into Pinterest.

I’ve known about it for a couple of years now because one of my online friends was one of the very early beta users for it. She told some of us about it, I took a look, but wasn’t convinced. It seemed like it could be great for designers, or event planners, or anyone whose job and/or interests spent a lot of time focusing on visuals. Browse around the web and save images of stuff you like? I didn’t see the appeal.

Pinterest aims to connect people through the things and images they find interesting — that’s their mission statement, loosely paraphrased. When an image on the web catches your interest, you can “pin” it to a board – think of the virtual version of tearing out pictures from magazines and pinning them to a corkboard. You can have multiple boards, grouping your pins into different areas. As you pin images, they’re immediately visible to other users, who can then repin them to their own boards. Each pin includes a link back to the site of the original image, so if you pin an image from someone’s blog, you’ll have an easy way to get back to that blog post later.

Now, since the site is driven by the idea of using images found anywhere, without necessarily obtaining permission from the owner, there are some copyright tangles the company is currently working on untangling. Someone who makes a living creating unique images likely wouldn’t appreciate a casual visitor distributing them without permission. Pinterest does provide a browser add-in that automatically links a pin’s image back to the source site, but the site doesn’t provide any way to set security on your pins. Anything you pin is immediately available to the rest of the world, regardless of whether the original image wasn’t publicly available.

I can understand and sympathize with the people and companies claiming it’s copyright infringement. On the other hand, my own stance on publishing content to the Internet is that once you let it out there, it’s out of your hands and into the wild. If I write something on this blog or post it to Twitter, I must assume that anyone in the world can–and could well be–reading it. That includes family, friends, employers, and whoever it is that you’re writing snarky notes about. Even if a web site is configured to prevent people from right-click-copying an image, or a Facebook status is privatized to a select group of people, a really determined person can simply take a screen shot.

But I digress. Pinterest. I resisted, until last week. A different online friend posted a picture of a cake resembling a basket of M&Ms, and mentioned that it was from one of her husband’s Pinterest boards. That was the tipping point; while it’s no secret that the site’s primary user base is women, there had to be something to it if both my friend and her husband were on it.

I’ll just take a look, I thought. And then, I’ll set up an account, but just to follow other people I know. I’m not going to actually use it.

(People who’ve known me for a couple years may recognize this particular thought process.)

Username? That’s an easy decision, and besides, I wouldn’t want anyone else taking this one. And what the heck, I might as well throw some content up there, just for the heck of it…

And HERE is where Pinterest really sucked me in. Because as soon as I’d pinned a handful of images, mostly books and kid-related items, people started repinning them. Within that first hour, I got 24 repins. Do you know how long it took me to get 24 comments on this blog? Or 24 retweets on Twitter? Weeks and weeks. But on Pinterest, I got immediate validation that people liked me! They really liked me! (My pins, anyway.) I was hooked.

Prospective social media sites, take note, because I doubt I’m the only person who reacted like that. Everyone wants to be liked by others. Make your site members feel like they’re immediately popular, and they’ll come back again and again to get that ego boost.

And speaking of ego boosts, my own boards are here. Just in case you’re curious… or want to help feed my ego. 😉