Why the Interest in Pinterest?
As a stereotypical Millennial, I am often approached by APQC's KM subject matter experts to provide “user opinions” on new social media tools. Within a span of four days I had two e-mails in my inbox from Cindy Hubert and Jim Lee inquiring as to how and why I use Pinterest. I was already an active user of the tool, but I had not stopped to think about why I was drawn to it or its implications for collaboration.
For those of you who have yet to make the leap and request an invite, Pinterest provides its members with the ability to "pin" appealing pictures to digital bulletin boards. Each pin acts as a link to the original source of the content. For example, a mouthwatering picture of Oreo and peanut butter mini pies serves as a handy link to the primary source: a recipe on a popular blog. The content of all boards can be searched and followed by anyone, but is most visible to a user’s followers.
Cindy and Jim's questions were simple yet thought-provoking: "Why are people drawn to Pinterest? What makes it so appealing that users want to participate? How is collaborating on Pinterest different than collaborating in the workplace?" I couldn't answer their questions on the spot, but I have been mulling them over since.
While I don't think there is one right answer, for me, the reason for Pinterest’s success is that it’s painfully easy to use. Just as successful KM is embedded in the flow of employees' work, pinning on Pinterest boards is seamlessly integrated with Internet surfing. A 30-second plug-in download allows users to instantaneously affix interesting Web content directly to their boards via a small pop-up window. Users are able to participate and collaborate without leaving their current Web page or losing their train of thought.
How do we take the principles of Pinterest and incorporate them into our KM initiatives? How do we make KM so painfully easy and seamlessly integrated that employees participate without even realizing it? Use the comments section below to share your ideas or discuss other implications of Pinterest for collaboration.
Email this
2 Comments
Rachel, I love your insights! Yep, the interest in Pinterest continues to grow (12 million monthly users at last count, according to comScore), but I really can't believe it's just ease of use. After all, doesn't SharePoint have that same ease of use? My perspective is that Pinterest exploits three things that, if we kept these things in mind, it would help us create an enviroment for better connections and collaboration inside of our organizations: 1) it has interesting content and, because of this, lets me focus on only those things I'm interested in - take that, information overload 2) it creates common ground quickly and poses no barriers to "get to someone" who I believe has great ideas and 3) it makes curation (think content management) fun and relevant.
Has anyone figured out how to do these three things when creating approaches to help people inside organizations collaborate? What are the implications for communities of practice with these exciting new capabilities? I'd love to hear what others think.
Cindy
Great observations, and I agree. If people have to "think," they're not going to use the tool. Pintrest allows people to share things that are interesting to them and in most cases they don't even have to put a finger on the keyboard.
One concern about enterprise use of social tools such as Pinterest is the lack of organizational tools. Right now, your only option for organizing your pins are self-determined "boards". These are essentially tags, and unless I'm mistaken they're not collaboratively shared among individuals - meaning that my boards are not your boards, and you can't pin stuff onto my board. The issue is that in an enterprise world, the content that you're pinning - stuff like standards, processes, procedures, templates, etc. - all needs to be organized into the enterprise's terminology.
The proliferation of boards and pins with minor typographical or conceptual errors - imagine if I pinned something to "AP" and you pinned the same thing to "AccountsPayable" - is a major barrier to adoption. Tools like our PCF can help because they provide a simple vocabulary on which organizations can standardize, not only for processes, but for content (see our landmark 2010 study on how organizations are using process frameworks to get real work done.)