The newest social networking craze appears to be the sharing of pictures, not of words. Instagram and the notorious 4chan are just a couple of these image-based social networking sites that have cropped up, and they’re all gaining popularity at an alarming rate. Tumblr and Pinterest in particular have acquired a massive following. These two sites at first glance are suspiciously similar, but upon looking closer Tumblr is proven superior, having more original artwork and not placing restraints upon users or their art.
Tumblr and Pinterest both revolve around a central interface with a constant influx of new images and material from other users –the ‘Dashboard’ on Tumblr and the ‘Pinboard’ on Pinterest. You can select posts and repost them to your own private feed that you control. The material contained in these posts, however, differs vastly from site to site. On Tumblr your blogging experience can be expressed in a variety of mediums, from pictures to text posts to video and audio clips. Pinterest exclusively deals with pictures, and the referring URLs show that many of the images come from Tumblr in the first place.
Pinterest is an image-only website. Most of the images are simply photographs, showing food or exotic locations or an impressively detailed manicure. On Tumblr, users are encouraged to create their own art and share it with their online community. This includes photography, original writing, screencap or photo editing, drawings and paintings, as well as non-artistic, informative (or mischievous) posts about topics which they find interesting.
Pinterest states on their homepage that their mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing,” and intriguing but poorly executed idea. Like Tumblr, you can ‘follow’ the blogs of certain users, and their newest posts will appear on your pinboard, but posts from unknown users also appear, based on what Pinterest’s technology perceives your interests to be (which is often inaccurate). On Tumblr, you see posts only from users you have actively chosen to follow, and the ‘reblog’ feature makes it easy to interact and build friendships with other users. Pinterest’s option to comment on posts is completely unmoderated, allowing virtually any user on the sight to comment on a post you’ve ‘repinned’.
These two popular image-based social networking sites both want to create an online community for users to share their art and ideas, but Pinterest falls short of Tumblr due to numerous setbacks, especially the lack of original artwork and confining users to a specific form of expression.