Pinterest,  an image based search engine; a source of inspiration and promoted as a place to find new ideas. Everyone loves it; it’s a happy place, the mix of beautiful images and the inspiring quotes seem to provide apt answers to our searches.

There are countless tutorials on how to start Pinterest accounts and happy stories on how the pins have helped grow the website traffic. I too ventured to create a Pinterest account; creating the boards and the pins and hoping to attract more traffic to my website. There are blogs and videos that teach strategies on how to create better pins and how to attract more traffic and how win the Pinterest game. I am not anywhere there yet. But I have learnt two lessons not taught in the tutorials.

First is that people can take images from your website and use it to create pins and drive traffic to their site. I discovered an image titled “Marhaba Dubai: The Desert Safari” created by me and posted on my website (the link to the post is Marhaba Dubai: The Desert Safari), being used by another site as a pin to their website. I have masked the address of the site; it’s a .com site, my site ends with .net.in. But such a discovery on Pinterest is disheartening ( or should I consider flattering ?). I have written to Pintrest, requesting them to remove the pin. They replied back asking for the pin’s URL and two declarations from their copyright page. I have mailed them the same and am waiting for the pin to be deleted.

Second is how to block a follower. I was surprised to see a lone follower for my pinterest site. The profile picture was a lady in a bikini. On checking the profile of the follower, there were no boards and no pins created, only an obscene description. Not very pleasant. So I learn how to block a follower; before I learn how to attract followers.

And the learning continues. So far the only activity from my pinterest account are a few random clicks and saves. A long way to go……