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Pinterest Blogger captures stardom by pinning 5700 images on site.

Christine Martinez spent the past week frolicking on the Caribbean island of St Barts after becoming a star by sharing her sense of style at Pinterest.com.

Pinterest has become the web’s hottest young website, particularly among women, by giving people virtual bulletin boards that they decorate with pictures showcasing interests in anything from food to sports, fashion or travel.

“Gawd I love Pinterest,” fashion blogger Martinez said in a Twitter message fired off between flights on Friday as she made her way back to her home in the Californian city of Oakland

Nearly a million people have signed up to follow Martinez at Pinterest where people “pin” pictures they have taken or, in most cases, plucked from elsewhere on the internet.

“I have a penchant for pretty,” Martinez said in her Pinterest profile, which had a picture of her with her cherished dog ‘Miles.’

As of Saturday, she had 43 Pinterest boards with more than 5700 images reflecting her taste in jewellery, swimsuits, and more.

Pinterest is such an influential fashion venue that chic beachwear label Calypso St Barts took her to the French island territory for a week to “live pin” the label’s swimsuit photo shoot.

“Pinterest is the latest procrastination tool of the masses,” Avery Spofford of fashion website shefinds.com wrote in an online post citing Martinez’s adventure as evidence of Pinterest’s clout.

“Mostly, people just like to look at photos of puppies and cake and interior design,” Spofford continued. “Us, too!”

Pinterest was launched in early 2010 and has been growing at a dizzying rate in the past six months despite being invitation-only. The website reportedly has more than 13 million users.

Pinterest is driving more online traffic to retail websites than social networks LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ combined, according to a January report from Shareaholic.

The first investor to back in the venture, Brian Cohen, is delighted with its results so far.

“Pinterest’s traffic charts aren’t hockey sticks – they’re rocket ships,” internet tracker RJ Metrics said in an analysis released last month.

“Pinterest is the hottest young site on the internet.”

Brands are leaping onto Pinterest, setting up pages to appeal to prime shopping demographics or forming collaborations such as the one between Martinez’s MilestoStyle.com blog and Calypso.

“The amount of free advertising a brand gets on Pinterest is ridiculous,” blogger Kerry Sauriol wrote at WomenInBizNetwork.com.

“Without even having their own Pinterest boards, clothing companies, furniture designers, tech companies, and on and on have their products pinned and adored,” she continued.

“Think of the marketing power of a brand that does have a board.”

Other websites have begun adding “pin it” buttons inviting visitors to decorate Pinterest pages with images using a single click, according to co-founder Ben Silbermann.

“The last few months have been a whirlwind here at Pinterest,” Silbermann said in a recent blog post. “It’s humbling, and exciting.”

The small Pinterest team works in box of an office in single-story building in downtown Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.

About a dozen engineers were working at rows of desks in an undecorated room when an AFP correspondent visited.

Pinterest said it was too swamped with attention from users and media for interviews.

Rampant pinning of images snagged from the internet has raised concerns about copyright violations at Pinterest.

The website follows procedures set out in US copyright law and has a form at the site for reporting violations, Silbermann explained. Each “pin” has a flag icon for marking pirated content.

“We care about respecting the rights of copyright holders,” Silbermann said.

“Copyright is a complicated and nuanced issue and we have knowledgeable people who are providing lots of guidance.”

Pinterest fans include Dave Morin, a longtime member of the Facebook team who left the leading social network to start Path.

Morin sees Pinterest as part of a trend for people in “the world’s biggest club” Facebook to form sub-groups based on interests or close relationships.

“Now that the world understands how to be social through the internet people want unique experiences in different contexts,” Morin said, noting that Path lets people intimately share with family and close friends.

“Pinterest has a space where you can talk about your deep interests,” he continued. “In my case, deep interests in ski gear or photography gear.”

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BRISBANE AUSTRALIA SPAWNS A NEW FACEBOOK LIKE CONCEPT USING LIVE VIDEOS AS THE COMMUNICATION MEDIUM

A first name isn’t the only thing Mark Cracknell has in common with Mark Zuckerberg.

Like the Facebook founder, Cracknell is a young man with big dreams and a background in computing. He also has a website, Kondoot, which, like Zuckerberg’s famous social network, enables users to share their lives online.

Mark C may not have emulated Mark Z’s stratospheric success just yet, but the comparison is already being drawn – by no less than the Wall Street Journal – after the 21-year-old Brisbane-based entrepreneur and partner Nathan Hoad returned from the US with $3.2 million in funding for their site.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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RUPERT MURDOCH ACCUSES GOOGLE OF AIDING FILM PIRACY

News Corp chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has accused internet giant Google of aiding film piracy.

The Australian-born media mogul used his recently activated Twitter account to blast the search engine, branding it a “piracy leader”.

“Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them,” Murdoch wrote.

A short time later he added to the rant, saying film making was “risky as hell”, with piracy hurting actors and writers.

Murdoch then added: “Google great company doing many exciting things. Only one complaint, and it’s important.

“Just been to google search for mission impossible. Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.”

That was a reference to the latest Tom Cruise movie Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

The comments were among Murdoch’s most outspoken since launching his Twitter account on January 1.

He’s used the social networking site to pass judgement on a number of subjects, ranging from serious comment on US politics to his own error-prone typing.

“Re complaints about my spelling! Problem is my pathetic typing. Sorry, if anyone really cares,” the media mogul wrote on January 10.

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INDIAN GOVERNMENT TAKES STAND AGAINST IT GIANTS

IT IS SENSITIVE ABOUT POSTINGS ON SITES.

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India’s government has authorised the prosecution of 21 internet firms, including Facebook, Yahoo! and Google, in a case over obscene content posted online, sources say.

The approval could lead to company directors being called to a trial court in New Delhi to answer serious charges such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord, an official and a lawyer said.

A criminal case against the web titans was first filed in a lower court by local journalist Vinay Rai, who complained that the sites were responsible for obscene and offensive material posted by users.

He also claimed they had broken laws designed to maintain religious harmony and “national integration” in India.

Rai’s lawyer, Sashi Prakash Tripathi, said: “We had applied for the government’s sanction and the ministry of communication and IT has filed it directly in the metropolitan magistrate’s court.”

The companies targeted have filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to have the lower court’s case against them stayed. The hearing of the petition is to resume on Monday.

The lower court yesterday ordered that summons be served on the 10 foreign-based companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and YouTube.

The government’s sanction to prosecute represents an escalation of a recent tussle between social networks and the government.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal last month pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” online content and urged social networks to exert more control over their platforms.

He provided examples of religiously-sensitive images and obscene photoshopped pictures of Indian politicians.

Mukul Rohatgi, a lawyer for Google India, told the High Court on Thursday: “No human interference is possible and, moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents.”

The companies will now hope the High Court stays the prosecution, but they received some hostile comments from a presiding judge.

“You must have a stringent check. Otherwise, like in China, we may pass orders banning all such websites,” the Delhi High Court said.

Companies should “develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages”, Justice Suresh Kait was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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Facebook isn’t the only online community with a captive audience.

IT IS no coincidence the Academy Award-winning account of Facebook’s meteoric growth was entitled The Social Network.

Facebook.com

After all, with more than 800 million active users globally and at least 250 million photos uploaded every day, the little blue website that started in 2004 as a mere side project to co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s university studies is now – indisputably – the social network.

Having long ago knocked the once-mighty MySpace out of its spot as the world’s No.1 social-networking website, Facebook is proving unassailable, even to fellow tech behemoth Google.

Google +

Google plus.com

Google’s social network, the four-month-old Google+, has lured just 40 million users.

Digg

Digg.com

Linkedin

Among the hundreds, if not thousands, of wannabe Facebook killers, only a few dozen have garnered serious numbers.

Twitter

Twitter.com

We might have all heard of Twitter (200 million-plus users) and perhaps even LinkedIn (120 million-plus users) but, especially in other parts of the world, none of these, not even Facebook, is king.

My space

Myspace.com

Why? Because though such mind-boggling figures matter when you’re courting investors or advertising dollars, they don’t if you are truly trying to create a social network where like-minded people can mingle, as is evidenced by the surprising number of smaller communities based purely on niche interests, such as languages, lifestyles or even a love of a specific animal, that appear with surprising regularity.

QZone

qzone.qq.com

With a whopping 480 million-plus users, QZone is bigger than Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace (33 million-plus) put together.

It is the No.1 social network in mainland China, where Twitter and Facebook are banned. It’s not entirely free, with many features only accessible after paying a fee that allows users to access a Twitter-like micro blog, instant messaging, photo sharing and music streaming.

Pinterest

pinterest.com

Just 19 months old, the invitation-only Pinterest is a highly addictive image-based social network where users share their favourite images with friends.

It might not sound terribly interesting but for right-brained creative types who love collecting pictures of ”stuff”, it’s a digital dream. It allows users to share ideas and concepts that couldn’t possibly be conveyed in words.

Businesses such as ad agencies and graphic designers use it to get a feel for what clients want. Those planning weddings use it as a digital cork board filled with dress designs, ideas for cakes and colour schemes.

ASMALLWORLD

asmallworld.net

Founded by Swedish banker Erik Wachtmeister and his wife, Countess Louise Wachtmeister, ASMALLWORLD is an invitation-only social network for ”the elite” who don’t want to rub shoulders, even digitally, with the hoi polloi.

It is thought to have about 500,000 users, including James Blunt and Ivanka Trump, among others, and allows them to discuss important matters such as fine dining in the world’s great cities, seek out appropriately vetted flat mates and, most importantly, socialise with those of their own fine, well-bred and well-heeled ilk. Of course, we can’t verify any of this – we’ve never scored an invite.

Instagram

instagr.am

Snap-happy iPhone owners can share their daily goings-on via photos, which can be edited on the fly. It’s like Facebook without words or Twitter using only pictures.

Snap a picture and upload it to your Instagram profile to let your friends and followers know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it and where such excitement is occurring. You can’t even add a caption (but you can leave a comment).

Depending on how interesting – or good – your happy snaps are, others will start following and interacting with you and you’ll see some stunning photography. With more than 1 million photos shared every day, it is absolutely mesmerising and lets you do something useful with that bursting iPhone Camera Roll.

Orkut

orkut.com

Owned by Google, the multilingual Orkut was once massive in India and Pakistan – until Facebook came along.

Now its biggest audience is Brazil, where 58.7 per cent of its 66 million or so users reside. Indians make up 28 per cent of users, while Japan is the third-largest community – but only at 5.3 per cent.

Orkut offers a simple, youth-oriented interface that includes lots of ”cute” teen-friendly features such as ”cool” rankings. One of its most clever features is the ability to add people to your ”Crush List”, where, if both members independently add each other, they will be informed of their mutual admiration. It adds a digital twist to the age-old, angst-ridden notion of unrequited love.

Ning

ning.com

Netscape co-founder (and tech guru) Marc Andreessen is behind Ning, a DIY social-networking service that lets the likes of you and me take on Mr Zuckerberg. Well, not quite.

But you can build a website or social network based on your design and target market. Plans start from about $3.95 a month for a basic, home-spun social-networking site with no more than 150 users; you’ll pay between $29.95 (up to 10,000 members) and $59.95 (unlimited members) a month if your user base grows. Depending on which subscription plan you choose, you’ll be able to offer many of the features included on ”real” social networks, from live chat and photo sharing to uploading video in branded media players

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