My Take on Pinterest

The internet has made millions of great (and not so great) ideas readily accessible.  I read so many sites that I often forget where I found something.  Sometimes everything just kind of meshes together and there is no one source.  That's the great thing about the internet, we're able to share and learn from one another.

Which is why I LOVE Pinterest.  A place to organize all of those sites that I come across.  A virtual idea board with pictures that link to the original site.  I use it for decorating ideas, organizing ideas, gift ideas, EVERYTHING!  My husband (who doesn't even have a facebook page) uses my boards to post pics of stuff he wants... go ahead and check out my "My Style" board, he has the world thinking I want a whole closet of New England sports team tshirt!

I have featured a couple of ideas that I found on Pinterest but, as I mentioned the other day, there is a bit of controversy surrounding Pinterest.  I admitted it already, but I still do not fully understand all of it. Here's a post from the SITS Girls that not only has great information but also links to some great articles that give even more info!

My opinion is that there are very few things in life that are completely original.  We are all inspired by something and we should always give credit to that inspiration.  I do not believe we should COPY another and try to pass it off as our own nor should we ignore what inspired our ideas.

I don't see the ideas that I reproduced from Pinterest as stealing but as sharing.  I am sharing my experience creating a project with my readers.  I fully admit that most of the things I work on with Abby is not my idea.  I saw it somewhere else and either repeated it or put my own spin on it.  I always give credit back to the original site (not to Pinterest).

I hope I'm not missing the point here but I think that's the basic point to all of this:  give credit where credit is due.

Reading all these articles today, really got me thinking about how Pinterest is really changing the whole idea of internet safety.  I post pictures of my girls and talk about where I live all the time.  I also ignore all the advice I hear about watermarking my photos so that they are not used for purposes other than my blog.  It hit me today that sites like Pinterest can make a single photo reach a whole lot more monitors than my little blog here reaches in a year.

It not only has me thinking that it's time to stop being lazy and actually watermark my photos but also think a bit more carefully about what I put on my site.  When you are blogging, you are sharing with the world and what someone does with an image is out of my control once that image goes live.  Will Abby or Lilly be embarrassed to see or read something I posted.  If I post a video, would they appreciate that it went viral 10 years from now?

I guess this whole Pinterest thing has really made me realize how connected we all are and how easy it is to blindly walk into a sticky situation you may not know existed.

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this!