Perhaps the hottest social media vehicle at the moment is neither Facebook nor Twitter, but Pinterest, the service that lets you create and organize “boards” of things you love. Much has been written about Pinterest and how its user base skews heavily female, with boards dedicated to style, food and of course cats. It takes a while to wrap one’s head around the concept, but in the end, being able to maintain an organized, visual representation of items of interest with appended comments has great appeal. With all the buzz, all the growth (and all the cats) that Pinterest has generated, it was only a matter of time until the evil, capitalist businesspeople took notice. Count me in as a proud member of that group. While Pinterest has not created brand pages like Facebook, it is certainly not discouraging the use of the platform as a business tool.

I have established a Pinterest account that I plan to use to pin digital signage items of interest. So far I have set up three boards, described below. While anyone can follow another user and “repin” (think retweet) items they like onto their own boards, Pinterest also permits users to allow authorized followers to pin items directly on to their boards. Clearly, a board with a broad array of contributors has more value and interest. Here are the boards I have established that I would love to have others contribute to:

Digital Signage Community: General items of interest, humor or amazement related to digital signage.

Digital Signage Installs: Items related to digital signage installations around the world .

DSE 2012: Items of interest in and around the upcoming Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas.

I have seeded the first two with a few examples, and i will get to the third next week. If you would like to contribute directly to these boards, simply sign up for Pinterest (if you haven’t already), and follow the board or boards that interest you. I will figure out how to enable you to pin directly. All basic rules of Pinterest apply, and if you do your best not to use the comments as a marketing channel, you can stay. Oh, and no cats, even though mine are very cute. The intent is not to monopolize the digital signage Pinterest discussion, but instead to get it started and make it open. I think and hope that these boards can become a great resource and springboard for discussion for everyone, and I am sure that ideas for additional boards will come up. Others can and will set up boards of their own, and they should. But it has to start somewhere, and now seems like the right time. Happy pinning!

UPDATE: The tools on Pinterest for determining who is following a board are, shall we say, lacking.  If you followed and have not been notified that you can contribute, drop me an email and let me know!