Strong Opinions @marksbirch

caterpillarcowboy:

likesandlaunch:

Social Media: Evolving From Long Form To Push Button
In the evolution of social media over the last decade, the trend has been a move from long form content, which has high friction of participation (both on the production and consumption side) to ever lower requirements placed on a user to participate in a conversation.

(via Elad Blog: How Pinterest Will Transform the Web in 2012: Social Content Curation As The Next Big Thing)

If I were tumblr I’d be so insulted by this article. Pinterest is del.icio.us with pictures. Tumblr is community and expression in a way that is genuinely unique on the internet, at a scale that is completely unmatched. Articles like this are one more reason I have so much disdain for most Silicon Valley trend bloggers.

Pinterest over Tumblr?  Maybe for the ease of creating silly content, but in terms of high value content the two could not be further apart.  For all the reasons that Dave mentioned, I agree that this article and the accompanying post sit squarely in the Silicon Valley echo chamber.

That being said, the fact is that Pinterest is very likely to become the next major social platform.  It is the first web service that paints a concrete vision of the “Internet of things” that others have tried to do in the not so distant past such as StickyBits.  And that silly content that is “curated” in Pinterest by teenage girls?  It is probably the purest form of the taste graph than any other service is currently providing.  Those of you creating recommendations engine / web applications need to take that into serious consideration.  Once Pinterest molds and packages this data, you might be better off just connecting into their service. 

Simply put, we should all stop with the comparison charts.  They are merely strawmen that people have been using to justify heavily biased viewpoints.  Just as Facebook and Twitter are very different beasts serving very different purposes, comparing Pinterest and Tumblr and making some value judgement via specious graphical representations is nonsense.  Tumblr is a built in community.  Pinterest is the “Like” button on meth.  Trying to pit one against the other is an exercise in futility.