The technical cost of admission to participate in online activities has been steadily dropping for thirty years now. Back in the dial-up days modemers had to possess (on at least some level) knowledge of DOS and terminal software and modem initialization strings to get their computers to talk to one another. It wasn’t until I first saw the World Wide Web, some dozen or more years after I began calling BBSes, that I first used a mouse in conjunction with online activities — a lowering of the bar that I was sure would “ruin everything”. (The verdict is still out on that.)

Specifically over the past five years we’ve seen a steady decline in the cost to participate in online communities. We started with usenet newsgroups, then forums and message boards. Then you had blogs, run by self-appointed blowhards such as myself, talking about whatever to whomever would (or will continue to) listen. By the time we got to MySpace and Facebook, the cost of communicating and sharing with others seems (at least to us old timers) unbelievably low. Sign up, start posting. Could the price of admission get any lower? Yes. With Twitter, communications are limited to 140 characters per “tweet”.

And now, there’s Pinterest.

Like many online “things”, I understood the technical aspects of Pinterest before I understood the point of using it. I had the what and the how, I just didn’t have the why. After using it for a week or so I now have the why, I’m just not sure the why is for me. Anyway, here’s Pinterest.

Pinterest is most easily imagined as being a virtual cork bulletin board, the idea being you can “pin” things you like to your “board”. The things that you pin are pictures, and your board is divided up into multiple boards that you create based on topics.

The “why” is more difficult to explain. The most common use of Pinterest appears to be gathering inspirational photos for future projects. Let’s say you’re thinking about redecorating your bathroom. You could, using Pinterest, create a board called “Bathroom Ideas” and then search Pinterest for “bathrooms” and pin pictures of bathrooms you like. It’s the virtual equivalent of thumbing through a home interior magazine, cutting out photos of things you like, and making a collage out of them.

The pictures you pin can be obtained from outside sources (the Internet), or they can be pins from other Pinterest users. The fun part about the technology is following other people with tastes similar to your own. As you begin to re-pin their pins, and other people begin to re-pin your pins … boom, instant social network. As you add fellow Pinners you will start seeing the things they pin, at which point you’ll start seeing a steady incoming feed of things you are presumably interested in.

That’s not the only reason people create boards, of course. Sometimes people simply collect artwork they like, or jokes, or pictures of things they like, using Pinterest as more of a virtual collecting ground of stuff.

One thing I did not like was the sign-up process, in which you are forced to select several people to follow. These people come from the “most popular” section of Pinterest, which means you will most likely end up following several people that (a) you don’t care about and (b) will have to go eventually remove as you begin to fine tune your feed.

In my quest to figure this all out, I originally created the following six groups:

Pop Culture Cakes/Cake Pops/Cupcakes
Vintage/Retro Technology
Invading Spaces (Arcade)
Commodore 64
Skulls and Eyeballs
Star Wars (Pop Culture)

Since then, I have combined three of the groups (the Vintage/Retro Tech group now also encompasses the Commodore and Arcade groups), and added one new group (“Mancave”). I’ll be making one more group for shelves that will either tie back in to LoveThyShelf.com, or more likely, eventually replace it.

You can view my pins (or follow me on Pinterest) at pinterest.com/robohara.

We’re raising a generation where everything needs to be shared online. With our phones we tell people where we are, where we are going, and who we are with. We share pictures of our kids and our pets and our vacations with our friends, the friends of our friends, and often times, complete strangers. We share what movies we are watching and what music we are listening to in real time. We tweet our most intimate thoughts and share too much too often. Pinterest, although less invasive than some of those things, is a natural evolution that embraces that mind set. It’s no longer enough to collect pictures of things you like and save them on your computer. Pinterest meets two needs; not only can you collect pictures of things you like, but you can show the world the things you like, which to some people is just as important, if not more.

If it sticks around long enough, I can see Pinterest taking a slice out of the blogosphere — specifically, blogs that are set up for the sole purpose of sharing pictures. Why manage an entire website for pictures when you can just point picture to your Pinterest collection?

I’ll probably stick around Pinterest for a while. I’m enjoying the incoming flood of pictures, and I do like the idea of collecting pictures of shelves and mancave decorating ideas. I don’t know that it will replace any of the things I am doing now, but perhaps like some of the other online services I play around with, it’ll add to it.