Clay Shirky: What I Learned About Creativity By Watching Creatives

Via: PSFK #

Being a man on Pinterest

Some of my Boards on Pinterest..

Or: Really? Guys are scared of Pinterest?

This morning I read this on Salon.com: Pinterest’s Gender Trouble # . The headline struck me as odd on two levels. 1. Trouble, not problem or issue, but trouble. Strange choice of that word I thought. 2. Really?

I think it’s a meta moment. Either Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams has written a shallow article about, um nothing, no trouble. Or guys are shallow. Or both. As Salon has published the article I suppose it makes it relevant somehow. I think I should write an article about how Twitter is too gender-balanced and how that’s a problem.

Anyway, I think the person who left this comment below is on to something. The word he/she could have used in place of the phrase ‘not as important’ is ‘snobbery.’

vp19
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012 07:55 AM PDT
There’s also a geographic bent to Pinterest. Studies have shown that a disproportionate percentage of its members are in heartland states such as Iowa, as opposed to tech-centric coastal states such as New York, Massachusetts and California for other social networking sites. So not only does Pinterest trend female, its strength is in “flyover country,” not states teeming with Ivy League and Stanford alums. (Obviously, then, it’s simply not as important.)

Now I doubt that Facebook’s 200 million members in the USA are stuck in “flyover country.” And I guess the guys are ok with Facebook because they can leer at the personal pictures of women posted up there or something. You can’t do that on Pinterest. Oh wait, are we saying that there are no guys in “flyover country”?

In another comment, after a discussion about Cat Ladies, things veer rather too close to homophobia.

disigny
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012 08:46 AM PDT
Tell the truth now: how many “Cat Gentlemen” do you know?! (who aren’t Gay)

And then there’s the “what females do are totes inscrutable to me..” comment.

MichaelL
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012 06:44 AM PDT
From a male perspective, Pinterest appears like what I used to see middle or high school girls doing in their bedrooms – cutting out pages from magazines and pasting them together into collages of images. It was inscrutable to me then, and it’s inscrutable to me now. Nevertheless, I’m sure it has resonance with them, so I just figure I’m not their target audience and move along.

I really like Pinterest, I like it a great deal more than Facebook and (gasp!) Engadget. I post manly things on my Boards – I mean who the hell is more manly than Harry Crews? No one, I say, no one! Check him out on my Pinterest! #.

I also love the company of women.

Advertising versus products

posted by Dave Allen, 3 Comments

Let’s start here: Iain Tait leaves W+K to become ECD at Google Labs #, and then let’s consider a large, overly-speculative thought, not about why Iain left W+K as I have no idea only hunches, yet it means something for the world of advertising, but about an idea that’s been kicked around for a while – The End of Advertising.

Before you get too excited let me say that there’s nothing new there. That idea dates back to 2007 # and probably even earlier.

Perhaps today we might say that yes, we are now lurching towards the end of advertising, at least as we have known it. A realisation then, that battling the Internet platform (from an advertising POV) has been a useless endeavor and we now need to take a breather and face up to the fact. (That may sound hyperbolic but I’m standing by it.)

Here we are in 2012 and still the phrase ‘people and online advertising’ feels akin to oil and water to me. Not a cozy fit in other words. Yet one given, a truism if you like, is that people (whoever they may be) want products. That sort of closes the circle, right? Well, not really if advertising agencies keep using Internet/web/mobile platforms as if they’re Meta-TV’s, Meta-books and Meta-Newspapers..that mindset cannot last. It always seems to fall to tech companies to point this out. Last month Paul Adams, formerly of Google and now on the product team at Facebook, posted his thoughts in an article titled The Future of Advertising: Many Lightweight Interactions Over Time #. If you work in any facet of advertising it’s worth a read.

Anyway, sticking with today’s date rather than looking too far back (because nostalgia can be fatal to one’s ideas,) let’s look at what’s going on in the online product world just this month:

Facebook picks up Instagram (no link, it’s old news.)
Twitter creates IPA, the Innovators Patent Agreement # and buys social analytics startup HotSpots #.
TBWA launches product development arm, Pilot.is #.
Path raises $30 million #.

Facebook buying Instagram has the pundits all up in a twist trying to divine Zukerberg’s reason for purchasing the company, but perhaps it was only done to stop Instagram landing in the arms of a competitor that makes products: Google for instance?

The Twitter and TBWA news above came across my tweetfeed yesterday morning and of course there are more examples of big companies, ones that gain extra attention on the attention-scarce web, getting into the Internet of Things game that I must surely have missed. What I do know is that companies like Made By Many # have been at it for a while and Russell Davies # has been wrapping his head around Internet “things” for some time, and has had fun playing with them during RGAMakeDay #. And Portland-based Uncorked Studios # helped to make this – Safecast #.

Bell Labs has been at it for decades #. And recently we’ve seen Nest and Little Printer, two wonderful Internet products, one whimsical, one really useful #.

So what we are seeing is that it has been ongoing for a while, where it is a different way of approaching people online and interacting with them offline at the same time. Ongoing yes, but advertising agencies need to embrace change faster, even if by doing so they will only be drafting in the wake of the online users whose actions show us they are far out in front in this race.

Here’s a great quote from Iain Tait in a Techcrunch article # about his move to Google Labs:

“What I really want to do with my life is to get closer to the shaping of the connected world. For me that means getting deeper into the shaping of products and services, showing people the life-enhancing potential of technology, and helping to get those things into peoples’ hands. I believe that Google is in a unique position to make those things happen in the world.”

Perfect.

[Update] Techcrunch today: It’s Not About Instagram – It’s About Mobile #

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