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Pinterest: The New Church Blog?

Is Pinterest a fad? I don’t know—but a lot of folks thought Facebook and Twitter would be fads, too, so there’s no telling. I do know this much: Pinterest is, as of this writing, the third largest social network and rocketing up with stupid crazy growth.

For those who haven’t yet heard of this social network:

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections or ‘like’ photos. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting” via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing (from Wikipedia).

My definition is a bit more simplistic:

Pinterest is aggregated micro-blogging.

Tumblr came up with the idea of using images and videos as blog posts. The visual snapshot was appealing, but sharing still required RSS; fairly straightforward, but a fraction of the people use it.

Pinterest made it easy and fun to share, visually while adding simple categories that were readily adopted by millions of users. They even included the ability to write a little something to go along with the picture of video, plus a hashtag system that makes for easy searching.

Will Pinterest replace the pastor’s blog? Maybe. But there’s no doubt that sharing photos and videos of church events, activities and missions is always going to be popular for churches, so Pinterest will be adopted for the ease of use (not to mention the share-ability compared to posting on the church website).

I’m not ready to say “Pinterest is the death of the church blog,” but it may be the next iteration of it. 

Have you signed up your church or ministry for Pinterest? What are the best uses you’ve found?