Do Tell: Is Pinterest Hurting the Blog World?

I have been pretty addicted to Pinterest since the site first gained popularity last year. I don’t remember exactly when I first joined, but it has probably been around six months now. I believe that Pinterest is a very valuable and powerful tool for anyone seeking to leverage or promote a brand or product and it has been a constant source of inspiration for me for several months now. Not to mention, I have gained followers much more quickly on Pinterest than on any other social media site. The thing I love most about it, is that when I come across an image I love, rather than saving it on my hard drive like I once did, I now pin everything and keep the images on my boards. Doing this keeps me so much more organized. Many times, I’ll notice that I have subconsciously pinned a bunch of images that share a common style or theme and voila, a blog post is born!

While millions of people seem to be hooked on Pinterest, there are plenty of people out there who have negative feelings about it. I have heard several people say that they feel Pinterest will lead to the end of blogging. When blogging first surged a few years ago, everyone said magazines were losing readership because people were turning to blogs to get their images and information more quickly and for free. Now that Pinterest is here, it seems some people believe that the blogging world will suffer from a loss of creativity and that fewer people will read blogs because they will get a constant, more instantaneous “inspiration fix” on Pinterest. I honestly think it’s all in how you look at it and how you use Pinterest. For me, it’s a great organization tool and it provides me with inspiration, but I don’t think it has affected the quality of my blogging in a negative way. If anything, I think social media as a whole is changing and has come to be completely prevalent and readily available to just about everyone. In fact, a few months ago, I had lunch with a very well respected and prominent blogger who asked me if I was getting fewer comments on my blog lately and the answer was yes. My readership continues to grow steadily as does hers, but we both noticed that fewer people take the time to leave a comment—most likely because making the rounds to all of their blogs is not what it was in 2008. Now, there are millions of blogs with new ones popping up each day! What are your feelings on Pinterest? Are you a member? If so, are you hooked? Do you feel that Pinterest has negatively impacted the world of style blogs? I find this topic very interesting and would LOVE to hear your thoughts.