Liz Tunheim...speaks, hears, sees...

Pinterest is getting a lot of attention lately, so naturally I want to comment on my love for the platform.  I love that it is easy to share and consume images; I love even more that it pulls in photos from the site you want to share making it easy to save and consume great content.

I was first introduced to Pinterest last summer. Newly engaged, a colleague of mine invited me to Pinterest as she had been using it to pin the things she wanted to share with her wedding planner.  

I honestly did not get into it immediately, but in the past few months the site has received a lot of my attention. Between wedding planning and seeking fun holiday decor and food ideas, I found better content through my Pinterest friends (pulled in from Facebook) than in any Google searches I performed.

Pinterest has created a huge opportunity for content creators—if you want to share your content with the Pinterest community, you should:

1. Include interesting visuals to go along with your shareable content
2. Write a short description that includes what the image links back to as encouragement to visit your website
3. Upload and tag to correlating categories to help it spread  

The example here is a good one—it has a photo that pulled me in (though not exactly beautiful…) and links to a post offering “35 Pest, Disease and Weed Remedies,” or exactly I would want if my grapefruit looked like this. 

If this content was useful to me, I could pin this and later come back to it when I need this content.  Because of the visual image, it will not be hard to find this pin in my pinboard.

If you have not joined the Pinterest community yet, I highly suggest you give it a try.  I know the site has use for everyone because it is so easy.  I imagine it will just take enough people sharing likeminded content to drive users outside the heavy female population that Pinterest enjoys now.

Are you on Pinterest? What is your favorite use for Pinterest?

The first time I ever tried Napster, it was THE greatest thing I had ever come across.  Of course this was in the late 90s.  I am thankful to Napster for helping me experience a lot of new artists and music I would have never found had I not had that experience.

Flash forward a decade and of course we have learned a lot about digital downloads.  Heck five years ago when I lived in Italy I was downloading TV shows off bit torrent JUST to be able to keep up with my favorite shows.  The last five years have created so many amazing technology upgrades that give consumers instant access to their favorite songs, shows, movies…etc.  So instant in fact, that we get frustrated when we cannot get something instantly.  But I digress…

I have been a great user of iTunes (I know from looking at my spending habits over the past 5 years!).  I am also a loyal user of iTunes and Apple products (see previous threads).  There have always been some things missing though that I wished were easier with iTunes.  First of course was the ability to hear more than :30 of a song I am contemplating buying.  The second was something that Pandora was able to deliver for me — the ability to choose an artist and discover other artists similar and really hear their music before buying. Why? Because I truly LOVE music and I love discovering new artists.

The new Napster delivers both of these AND the ability to still put EVERYTHING on my iPods and iPhone.  Before I go further I must disclose that I am a Best Buy employee and Best Buy purchased Napster last year.  That said, I have not ever worked on Napster, nor do I have any understanding of the Napster plans internally.  If anything, the fact that Best Buy owns Napster just made me feel guilty for not ever trying it, so I decided to give it a try.

I purchased a group of 60 songs and a full year of streaming music. 

My favorite thing thus far in my test is that I have the ability to listen to most full songs while I search or do other things (you can add them into your queue and save playlists without purchasing the songs).  There are great radio stations based on type of music and it helps me search based on other songs that I like.  

Once I purchase songs, I can choose where they go.  I put them straight into my iTunes library and they upload the same as songs I purchase from iTunes.  This is amazing to me, because I have had no luck with any services outside iTunes.

So why do I think this is a great tool for music fans? Because as a fan I can find and listen to music how I want to.  And I still paid to have access to stream the music I listen to, so I am still supporting the artists/labels.

Getting back to Napster has taken me a decade, but I am really happy with the experience so far.  Looking forward to discovering more!