Women are driving the quick growth of easy-to-use online scrapbook

Oh, you pretty things. Just observe the mama giraffe nuzzling a toddler giraffe, that stunning idea for an indoor planter and people perfectly cooked bacon strips. That is what individuals are circulating on Pinterest, the most recent website-of-the-moment for sharing stuff you love.

Clean and straightforward to apply, Pinterest attracts individuals who deserve to organise the chaos of internet-age information overload. It serves as an internet scrapbook of imagery they find on the net, an area to post fashion inspirations, decorating aspirations and more.

This is a digital dream collage, a recipe box and a corkboard crammed with magazine clippings all of sudden.

Pinterest's popularity has exploded in recent months, making it one of several fastest-growing websites in history.

Its ascent to ten million monthly visitors happened faster than Facebook, Twitter or the other site tracked by comScore.

What makes Pinterest's surge unusual is that it's driven not by the standard geek crowd of young men from Ny and San Francisco, but by women, lots of whom live inside the Midwest and the central U.s..

Angela Bitz, an Iowa secretary, said she was drawn by the site's layout and straightforwardness of use. She uses Pinterest to assemble decorating ideas for her home and for crafting and cooking inspiration.

Much of Pinterest's appeal is ready displaying your plans and hopes.

Steve Jones, professor of communication on the University of Illinois in Chicago, likened Pinterest to a bulletin board in a bedroom or dorm room.

"It jogs my memory of my girlfriends in highschool who'd cut stuff out of magazines and pin it up on a wall," he said. Access to Pinterest is by invitation only, so those trying to join have got to request one from the corporate or ask a pal already on it.

If you are in, you could create a board and name it "recipes", "weddings" or the rest. As you discover images you love, you "pin" them on your boards to share with others.

"Because it's images only, it takes the clutter of text and web content away," says Jennifer Levy, an interior designer in Brooklyn who uses Pinterest to share images with clients and to get inspiration for designs.

You may follow other users on Pinterest, see the most well liked pins or find gift ideas by budget. You're able to browse categories along with architecture, fitness and weddings. Clicking on a picture can take you to a recipe or a blog post, or in certain cases, an empty page.

Librarians are using the positioning to "pin" reading suggestions. Nathan Swartzendruber, who works for a library in Ohio, said that since the site was entirely public, unlike Facebook, pins could draw comments from people you had never met.

Pinterest, like game-maker Zynga and so forth before it, likely do not have grown as popular without the assistance of Facebook, the world's largest online social network.

Facebook said last month that the selection of its users visiting Pinterest day by day grew by 60 per cent after it was integrated into the positioning in January.

Investors include prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of reviews site Yelp.

Pinterest, based in Palo Alto, California, is privately held and doesn't disclose what quantity of money it's making.

The positioning doesn't have ads or a transparent route to profitability, but that's common with internet companies in the beginning.

Facebook and Twitter didn't either.

Pinterest says on its website that being profitable is a protracted-term goal but not the immediate priority.

Unlike other startups, whose early users have a tendency to be men under 35, internet tracking firm comScore estimates that 68 per cent of Pinterest users are women, and these women drive 85 per cent of the traffic at the site. Greater than half are 35 or older.

Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, believes component of the rationale Pinterest's early adopters are less geeky than usual is its simplicity. You simply log in and pin.

However, Pinterest may be an indication that technology isn't just for geeky guys from now on.

But not everyone finds it useful. Lori Choman, who's retired and describes herself as a "DIY-er," said it was not worth her time. Although she saw "great photos" others pinned, she found it hard to determine any information regarding the photographs. "It's like getting a Sunday paper circular designed by my friends of items they prefer."

However, comScore says the positioning had 17.8 million US visitors last month, up about 50 per cent from 11.7 million in January and nearly four times the 4.9 million in November.

- AP

By Barbara Ortutay