By now, you’ve probably heard about the latest craze in social sharing: Pinterest. Pretty soon, you’ll be hearing about it coming to an iPad near you.
Pinterest is a social networking service that allows users to “pin” images and videos to spaces called “boards,” which are usually united by a common theme. Popping onto a friend’s Pinterest profile page, for example, will present several boards the person has created, each with a specific name. Clicking a board brings up the photos the user has pinned to it, which is essentially just a grid of thumbnails that can be expanded, captioned, commented on and shared.
The primary look of Pinterest is an ever-updating feed of images that friends and people a user “follows” have pinned. Many people have come to use the service to find inspiration for events, hobbies, weddings and the like; others use it to gather and share things they like in a more quick and clean way than on other networks, such as Facebook.
The network seems like a natural fit on the iPad. It’s a highly visual service that’s based almost completely on single clicks and organizing and sharing, things that are often done easily with the intuitive capabilities of a touchscreen. And because Pinterest is so heavy on photos and video, it’ll certainly lend itself to the Retina display found on Apple’s new iPad. Pinterest hasn’t announced a release date yet, its current app is for iPod Touch and iPhone only.
According to a report from CNN, Pinterest CEO Ben Silberman spoke at South by Southwest about the service, mentioning the forthcoming iPad app, some redesigns the service has planned, and the fact that Pinterest has recently leapt up to 11 million users. With the addition of a mobile platform, that’ll likely only increase.
If there’s something to worry about when it comes to Pinterest, however, it’s copyright concerns. The service lists clearly in its user agreement that any liability taken on by sharing a photo that a user doesn’t own – which happens just about all the time on the service – is solely that of the user. So while it may seem harmless to repin a photo and share it with others, already some content owners and photographers are taking issue with the site, and legal repercussions are possible.
Still, Pinterest seems to be doing well for itself, and any potential legal meltdowns are still yet to happen. If it can get past any potential entanglements and users can be sure they’re protected, Pinterest is likely to make a big impact on the app scene when it finally lands on the iPad.
