How Not To Use Pinterest

Is Pinterest a place to “organize and share things you love,” or a place to document unspeakable tragedy?

Every news organization is trying to figure out how to use Pinterest, because why not? It’s nice and popular and people really love it, so if you use it, people might love you too. So this feels… off?

Via: @steverousseau

Pinterest is a place for nice things. It’s for handbags. This isn’t an unspoken rule or a cultural preference, it’s in the instruction manual:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

So! Much credit to the Record Journal for trying to come up with a way to bring a complicated and horrible story together in a new way, and I know there isn’t really a good tool do build anything like this — maybe Pinterest will evolve! — except Storify, sort of. But this? This doesn’t work. Pinterest: It’s twee, not tragic.