The current social media buzz is all about Pinterest. It’s working on an invite only basis at the moment, but you can also send a request directly to Pinterest and go on their invites waiting list.

So what is Pinterest? Quite simply, it’s a virtual pin board where you can save your favourite images. You can organise the pictures into categories. And that’s about it. Sounds shit but I must admit, I do sort of like the idea though.

How can you get onto Pinterest? As mentioned before, you can send a request to the site itself. This takes about a week. I know this as I applied last weekend and got an invite today (even though I was already a member, through sneaking in via other means…).

The other way (and this is the real way I got in), is to pester your mates. Every Pinterest user can invite an unlimited amount of friends to join. Surely you must know someone who’s already on there? You can also plead and beg on social networking platforms – facebook, twitter, Google+ etc. I had to resort to this method as well, seeing as I don’t have any real flesh and blood friends.

If anyone wants to get an invite – just drop me an email – I’m happy to send out invites (even to complete strangers, yo).

I quite like the experience so far – the interface is clean and intuitive – although from what I’ve seen so far, you can’t rearrange your pictures manually after pinning them to your board.

My main gripe with the site is when you join up it warns you to “be nice” and “no nudity”. Which pretty much pisses my original intentions up the wall. (My first Pinterest board was to be a massive wall of tits).

I’m also a bit confused on the true purpose of Pinterest; should it be used to house a collection of images – where each board has a high visual impact? Should it be used as an influence map? Or should it be used as a collection related images that links back to other interesting sites and articles on the internet?

With that in mind, my first board is somewhat limited by comparison: http://pinterest.com/spiderwebdesign/icons