I’ve finally figured out how to describe Pinterest. It’s like all the pretty pictures we used to cut out of magazines when we were little. Except, instead of pasting them on construction paper or putting them in magnetic photo albums, we pin them to our online Pinterest boards. And, of course, instead of finding the pictures in catalogs and magazines, we find them in blogs and webzines. And thanks to the world wide web, we can show our friends all the fun things we’ve collected pictures of without ever leaving our computers.
When I was little, I liked cats. So much that I started a girls’ club called the “Purry Kittens” along with my cousin Melissa. All of us girls in the PK’s fed our love of cats and kittens by collecting pictures of cats. Greeting cards, calendars, magazines, rubber stamps—if it had cats on it, we cut it out and put it in our cat albums. There was even a section of our original “PK News” newsletter dedicated to sharing cat picturess.
The club grew up and became YLCF. I grew up and don’t actually have the dozens and dozens of kitties I planned on. But I realized, the other day, that I still have that little girl penchant for collecting pictures of pretty things. It just happens on Pinterest instead of in the pages of magnetic photo albums these days. And, oh yes, I’m pinning pictures of more than just cats. (In fact, my PK friends would be scandalized—I don’t think I’ve yet pinned a kitty picture! I’d better remedy this post-haste. 
)
So here’s a very basic explanation of Pinterest from a relative newbie—for my mom who’s learning Twitter this week and doesn’t want one more online thing to have to manage, and for my aunt who says it’s not a good idea to follow her on Pinterest because she’s lost.