Yesterday I read an article – from someone whose work I admire – that was adamantly against Pinterest. I read her post, then the articles she linked to and Pinterest’s Terms of Use. Then I saw several tweets linking to “Why I tearfully deleted my Pinterest inspiration boards” by Kirsten of DDK Portraits, who happens to also be a lawyer. Uh oh.
I was worried for a little bit until I remembered why I started putting my work online in the first place. I do it for people to see, hopefully enjoy or at least find useful, and if I’m lucky enough they’ll share it within their own little network or community. Over the last few months Pinterest has referred four times as much traffic to my website than any other. That’s a whole lot of people that wouldn’t have seen my work otherwise. I understand the concern, especially from photographers. Pinterest’s Terms of Use are definitely sketchy. I might be eating my words one day, but for now I trust Pinterest – they haven’t done anything wrong as far as I can tell. And as an artist, I welcome you to pin my work – I would think that a lot of other artists feel the same way.
If you don’t want your images shared, Pinterest has made it easy to disable pinning from your site by adding meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" to your header. You can also go into Flickr and turn off sharing easily.
Most importantly – before I repin I always click through to learn more about an artist, find more information and make sure it’s linked correctly – what about you?
When done right, with the proper source link, Pinterest is an amazing tool and sharing platform. I’ve found great tutorials, discovered new artists and photographers and your pins keep me constantly inspired.
Some interesting reading on the subject:
- Pinterest, Inspiration, Copying and the Whole Ethics Thing on Craftypod
- Prying Control from Your Cold, Cramped Hands by Kim Werker
