Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I would have written this article sooner, but I was busy on Pinterest. If you are still among the uninitiated, the social platform for collecting, sharing, and commenting on of photos of personal passions is uniquely engaging, absorbing, and addictive.

The human instinct to collect things–be it baseball cards, miniature spoons, or teacups–is as old as stuff itself. But it took Pinterest to perfect this process online. So no wonder it’s having a moment: comScore found that Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, who spend an average of 98 minutes a month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. It’s also driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn–combined, according to Shareaholic.

But why would Pinterest, which has been around since 2008, be attracting such swarms of devotees now? Fast Company turned to the experts to uncover the psychology behind Pinterest’s winning formula, and why it’s resonating with thousands of new users.

Finding Your Happy Place and Sharing Your Ideal Self

Dr. Christopher Long, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University teaching a course in consumer psychology this semester, says some of his students expressed concern over an assignment to use Pinterest to pin their own examples of content relevant to each chapter in the textbook. “They were trying to wean themselves because they were concerned with how much time that had spent on the site last fall. One even said her New Year’s resolution was to cut down on Pinterest,” Long says.

Long believes that Pinterest, like Facebook, relies on people generating content that interests other users, so once a critical mass of people comment and re-pin, it reinforces others to generate content. The more content is generated, the more it makes sense for users to frequent the site.

It’s more than just a critical mass of users, though, that’s driving Pinterest’s growth, says Long. “Pinterest boards are like its users’ personal happiness collages. They represent things that I appreciate, that I desire, and that express who I am, whether the things are cupcakes, shirtless David Beckham, or an inspirational quotation,” he says.

In contrast to Facebook, Long believes Pinterest is a refuge from relationship status, check-ins at restaurants, or pictures of kids. “It’s not a place where I have to worry about being bombarded by other people’s over-sharing of un-interesting or annoying daily experiences or about accidentally revealing intimate details of my day-to-day life,” he says.

In an ironic way, Long says, this frees many people to be more public about who they really are and who they want to be, because it’s less focused on the kind of personal content that sets off privacy and security alarms. “Pinterest is a place where we can demonstrate: ‘If it weren’t for all those mundane things that I do that I post on Facebook, this is what I would be doing and consuming. Here is my real self,’” he explains.

Perfecting the Art of Collecting

Though he doesn’t have his own Pinterest account, Ken Carbone, an acclaimed graphic designer whose clients include Tiffany & Co., Herman Miller, the Museé du Louvre, and the W Hotel Group, spent half an hour dissecting the design of the platform, after which time he admitted he’s jealous of everything from the logo to the generous but restrained size of the photos.

Beginning with the logo, which Carbone pronounces, “Casual but considered. People actually crafted this and it speaks to their attention to detail, which is not too rigid.” He goes on to praise the ease with which Pinterest devotees can gather images and create lists.

Carbone says Pinterest trumps Google image search because most of the images appear to be from original sources and art-directed photography, which makes products looks terrific.

“Not only does this stuff look great in the way it is presented, it takes me to this different world. I could waste a lot of time here. It’s visually very engaging,” says Carbone.

Though many social platforms have a tendency to lean toward content-rich density, Carbone says “That translates into busy and repulsive for me.” Pinterest’s secret weapon, he says, is its simplicity. “It’s generous in the way the graphics appear. With scrolling you can have a lot of content but not in the one frame. They’ve carefully built an interface with subtle touches of gray framing that is just enough.”

The proportion of the comments is also well-designed. “It is a clear sign the images are the hero and we are going to make those look as good as possible,” Carbone says.

Secret Sauce of Sharing

Long doesn’t know why some images get shared more than others. “I assume someone at Pinterest does, and that they are staying up late figuring out how to turn that into more users and more revenue.”

He does say that users seem to respond differently to pins from brands than the same one posted by an individual. “On Facebook newsfeeds, brand communications often take the form of sponsored stories or other ads, clearly indicating that this recommendation is being placed in your newsfeed because the brand wants it there.”

Long says that because Pinterest boards are essentially collections of “Likes,” the expectation is that users curate these more carefully than they may curate their Facebook Likes. “When I pin or re-pin something related to a brand, I am saying that I care about this content enough that I want to hold onto it or that I want to show other people that it is important,” he explains. “If Pinterest can keep enough eyeballs on people’s boards, those pins can functions as a more powerful and permanent recommendation than will my Facebook newsfeed’s transient mentions of what I listened to on Spotify or what brand of coffee I liked today.”

Carbone concurs. “The whole thing is advertising, but I don’t feel like I’m being sold anything directly, even though each pin will eventually take me to the source. I feel like a service is being provided for me to totally enjoy something that I am passionate about and find images I didn’t know existed.”

Room for Improvement

That said, Carbone has one suggestion. For decades, he’s kept versions of Pinterest’s mood boards in paper journals. “My own way is analog and private. I don’t necessarily need to share all my stuff,” he says. But for design and development, private Pinterest boards would be an excellent tool for professionals. “I would buy a subscription to that.”

Are you listening, Pinterest?

Related: Chobani Yogurt Tickles The Tastes Of Pinterest Addicts, And So Can Your Brand

Image: Flickr user Bryan Costin

Unless someone does, things start to fray around the edges.

Often it’s the CEO or the manager who sets a standard of caring about the details. Even better is a culture where everyone cares, and where each person reinforces that horizontally throughout the team.

You’ve probably been to the hotel that serves refrigerated tomatoes in January at their $20 breakfast, that doesn’t answer the phone when you call the front desk, that has a shower curtain that is falling off the rack and a slightly snarky concierge. This is in sharp relief to that hotel down the street, the one that costs just the same, but gets the details right.

It’s obviously not about access to capital (doing it right doesn’t cost more). It’s about caring enough to make an effort.

If we define good enough sufficiently low, we’ll probably meet our standards. Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.

Of course, the manager of the mediocre hotel who’s reading this, the staff member of the mediocre restaurant who just got forwarded this note–they have a great excuse. Times are tough, money is tight, the team wasn’t hired by me, nobody else cares, I’m only going to be doing this gig for a year, our customers are jerks… who cares?

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.

Like most things that are worth doing, it’s not easy at first and the one who cares isn’t going to get a standing ovation from those that are merely phoning it in. I think it’s this lack of early positive feedback that makes caring in service businesses so rare.

Which is precisely what makes it valuable.

The world’s most successful entrepreneurs play hard, but they work even harder. That much was made clear after the dust settled on f.ounders, an event that has quickly become one of technology’s premiere conferences.

There aren’t many events where you meet two heads of state, eat dinner with Bono, and party with 150 of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. But that’s exactly what happened at the f.ounders conference in Dublin, Ireland last week. The conference brought together the founders of Skype, YouTube, Netflix, Rovio, GroupMe, StumbleUpon, 4chan and more for four days of intensive networking, extravagant dinners and Irish hospitality — you couldn’t walk five steps without somebody offering you a Guinness.

Launched last year by Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, f.ounders gets unusually high marks from its attendees. “It’s certainly the best conference I remember attending,” declared Atlas Venture Partner Fred Destin. “It was a conference that lived up to, and even exceeded, the hype,” said Ben Rooney, the Wall Street Journal Europe‘s technology editor.

With help from the Irish government, f.ounders treated guests like rock stars. On the first night, the attendees participated in a bar crawl with Bono, ate dinner in Trinity College’s famous library (it was the inspiration for the library in the new Star Wars movies), and were surprised with a full orchestra for the after-dinner entertainment. The next day, the Prime Minister of Ireland Enda Kenny addressed the conference just before the attendees were bussed to a reception with the outgoing President of Ireland Mary McAleese.

Meeting the founders was McAleese’s last act as President. It demonstrates the importance of the event to Ireland, which is looking to attract entrepreneurs to help it rebuild a downtrodden economy.

---

Learning from the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs

---

When you stick 150 of the smartest and most ambitious people in the world together, you don’t get the typical conversation. I remember being asked to breakfast on the first day of the conference by Best Buy CTO and Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens. Our discussion dug deep into some of the issues facing startups and local businesses. Why isn’t Groupon Now taking off? Why hasn’t OpenTable expanded its platform beyond restaurants? How do you help small businesses better manage their excess inventory?

It was only the first of many in-depth conversations. One night at dinner our table had a heated debate on whether Europe could produce its own Google in the next decade, while I spoke with another founder about the evolution of technology journalism. Founders were making deals with a handful of VCs attending the conference, and large groups of attendees would stumble from the club into the hotel at 3 AM. At f.ounders, 4 AM was an early night — some stayed up until 8 AM drinking Jameson’s and making new connections, then showed up looking fresh for their panels just three hours later.

I learned that intensity is a trait shared by all great entrepreneurs. And not just intensity for their businesses, but for everything they do. It’s the same intensity that drove Steve Jobs to commit to a fruitarian diet — and to turn Apple into a world-class company

Second, I learned that Europe is brimming with entrepreneurial talent. The continent may not have the money or startup community that has turned Silicon Valley into the world’s technology hub, but it is catching up fast. Israel, London, Dublin and Berlin especially are building the foundations for a new breed of European entrepreneur — one more willing to take the risks necessary to build billion-dollar businesses. Israel has been churning out high-profile startups such as Waze and Shaker. London is wooing entrepreneurs with friendlier business laws and a budding startup community called “Silicon Roundabout.” Berlin boasts one of Europe’s strongest economies.

Finally, I learned that kindness and empathy are fundamental to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs may be brutally honest, but fostering relationships with partners and building enduring communities requires empathy, self-sacrifice and a willingness to help others without expecting anything in return.

The Social Analyst is a column by Mashable Editor-at-Large Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

As creators (or marketers), our role is to tell a story. Quite often, we make the “hero” of the story the focus of our time and our attention. If our customer is the hero, we talk about him or her. If we make our company the hero, we try to personify that experience that makes it worth it. If we write about ourselves, that’s probably the easiest kind of hero to write about.

What we miss, most times, is the importance of setting.

The Setting For Your Story

Spider-man swings from building to building in New York City. Can you imagine what it would be like to fire those web shooters and try to swing around in Billings, Montana? Hint: there aren’t enough skyscrapers to make it easy for Spidey to chase after the bad guys. Tarzan either gets to hang out in the jungle or the big city, depending on the telling of the story. He rarely hangs out in Pittsfield, Maine. Settings, as it turns out, are every bit as important to what we feel about characters and the plot as anything else in the story.

What does this have to do with marketing and business? Everything. If you think for a moment that your business exists without some kind of setting, even if it’s an online-only virtual business, then you’re missing a very important element to how you tell the story of your business to buyers and other important people. When we listen to a story (or watch it, or retell it), the setting is just as communicated as the characters in the transmission.

What is AJ Bombers if it’s not the local area place to gather and have fun with a side of burgers? Owner Joe Sorge just proved that you can have more than one AJ Bombers and still deliver that destination effect of fun, but he did it by making the setting of the restaurant be every bit as well-considered as the grass-fed beef he chooses for his burgers.

What are the Elements of Your Setting?

In a western movie, you know there will be gunfights. You know there will be wrongs that need righting. You know there will be a setting pairing off law enforcement with someone who feels they are above the law. Those are the promises of a western’s setting.

If I were restoring a classic old hotel in Tallahassee, Florida, and turning it into a destination boutique hotel, with a happening rooftop bar and an award-winning steak restaurant, I would do a few things to make this story sing. One, I would cast the guest as the hero of the story. No one comes to a hotel to meet the owner. It’s not the same as a restaurant. Two, I would tell the story from the front desk, through the lobby, into the elevator, down the halls, and all the way into the room, such that my guests understood what the “promise” of this setting would be.

Beyond the promise, there’s interaction. At AJ Bombers, I interact with their p-nut bombs: metal bomb-shaped containers that travel on rails from the bar to various tables, “bombing” guests with peanuts. The whole thing is absurd, kid-approved, and unique. Settings have interaction.

After promise and interactive elements, there’s the ways in which the setting helps or hinders the hero. In my hotel example, perhaps the setting helps me feel more metropolitan. In the western, the creek might rise and cut off Mother McCluskey’s farm, requiring me to ride out with my men to get her to safety (thus, a hinderance).

But Why Think About All This When Thinking About Business?

Because we humans build this in, whether or not you supply it. What is the iPod? It’s the opportunity to be the salvation DJ at some party, where you bring your tunes to help fix the setting of a sleepy party about to fail. That’s the story we might consider, whether or not we do it consciously. What is the setting for the car you drive? If you’re a Prius owner, you’ve set yourself as a hero who saves the planet and a few bucks at the same time, and so the setting of your vehicle travels through is a world seeking answers about making the world better. As a Camaro driver, my setting is the unintentional race course.

I’m saying that we all fill in the gaps in a setting, whether or not you’ve considered them to be part of your business. If you’re a PR company in Des Moines, how do you tell the story to your buyers such that it incorporates your locale? Maybe you do it by talking about how important community development opportunities are for your business. Maybe if you’re a business technology firm in Tallahassee, you talk about being situated deep in the heart of the growing Midtown area, which is cutting edge and trendy.

What About You?

How do you view setting? What does it mean for your business? How does it impact what you do or say about your company or yourself? And how replaceable is setting to your story?

I met with someone yesterday who said to me that he didn’t have any time to blog. Moments later, he told me what was happening on “Ice Loves Coco.” Earlier in the day, a woman explained that she didn’t really have the time for another social network, and then she explained how she volunteers for six different organizations in her town for various purposes.

I also met with the talented Deirdre Breakenridge, who told me about how strong her business is getting, and what 2012 holds. I met with Jay Baer and heard some of what’s got him occupied, including a huge tour for the book he wrote with Amber Naslund. I spoke with Jason Sprenger, who works for a big company by day, but blogs passionately about the intersection of sports and PR, too.

We Choose Our Own Adventures

We pick our paths. We decide what we make time to do. We choose our own adventures every single day. Each and every day, we have the chance to make choices.

Parents complain that they can’t work when their kids are home, and so I ask about what they do with the few hours the kids are at school, and/or what happens after the kids go to bed? Employees complain that they just don’t want to look at a screen after a long day at work, and so they prefer to take a break and… look at a screen.

We have time to do what we want to do. Tomorrow, I will have time to go to the gym in this hotel, and I will have time to find somewhere good to run. I signed up for CrossFit classes for the next four months, and so I will have time for those. I’m making more time for my kids in and around my business work. I have time to work with Julien Smith on our new book.

I want to do those things, so I will find the time.

What do you not have time to do? My guess? You could answer in the comments with three things you commit to stopping so that you’d find the time you want. What do you think?

In comic books, there’s this trend to “take things back to the beginning.” I’ve been reading comics for over 36 years, and ever since I’ve read interviews with comic writers and artists, that’s one of those cliche lines that come up over and over again. And yet, it’s necessary. Storylines get cluttered. New fans can’t identify with the characters. Things get all junked up. Relaunches lead to improved sales, more new readers, and many other beneficial boosts to the companies who try them. The old faithful readers of such comics rarely get too upset, and for that small percentage that a publisher loses, the newcomers more than make up for it in attrition.

Brands refresh all the time. Sometimes, it works well. Other times, we push back and decry the change. Beyond a new site design, which doesn’t hurt matters (and if you’re thinking a site design, might I refer you to these great premium WordPress themes – affiliate link?), what might also help is starting fresh with your audience, and retelling your story from the basics.

Start Fresh

What’s the stripped down, back-to-basics story of what you do, what you stand for, who you are? How would you tell that story to your audience? How do you tell it on your blog? And what does it look like in under 140 characters?

Starting fresh is somewhat harder than it seems sometimes, but the effort is really important. If you ran, for instance, the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, my favorite hotel in Boston, what story would you tell anew for people who have forgotten who you are and what you mean for travelers? If you’re a solo business selling some service, how do you tell your story in such a way that it resonates with your prospective audience?

Do people even really understand what you do these days? This was a question that Joe Sorge came up with for Kitchen Table Talks yesterday, and I found myself smiling, realizing that what I do has shifted over the last few months, and that when I do my own company’s retelling, people will scratch their head and think, “Huh, I didn’t know that’s where he’d gone with all that stuff.” (That’s simultaneously an opportunity plus a problem: you don’t want your colleagues and/or prospect base to think one thing and you are doing another.)

A Refresh Isn’t Amnesia

To refresh and start with your “back to basics” doesn’t mean to turn a sharp left and leave behind everything you had been doing up to that point. If certain elements in your story have evolved and become a very common part of what people know about you and your business, those parts can’t just vanish without some kind of “reimagining” of the landscape. For instance, if you started out as a burger joint, but then added Mexican food and Viking food and Thai food to the menu, if you’ve decided that you’re going back to being a burger joint, maybe you’ll keep a taco burger, a fish burger and a pad thai burger, to at least nod your head in the direction of the change.

Tell The Story Often

Your opportunity is to tell your story in such a way that your community gathers around that story and feels it to be their own. This is the best of all worlds. Anyone from the biggest and most complex brand down to the freelance marketing associate looking for extra work has an obligation to tell the story of what you offer and how you can help in such a way that others feel like they’re part of the experience. If chrisbrogan.com is anything, it’s a place where we talk with each other about what lies beyond social media and marketing, and what matters most in being human and deriving value from our relationships. That’s something you get to take with you after you read these posts. It’s always written such that you can make the story yours. Do that for your audience, too.

Start Fresh And Grow

Rethink yourself quite thoroughly before you choose to refresh. This kind of cutting and retelling works best when you’ve asked yourself a lot of questions and when you’ve sat with the potential new story for a while. Once you’ve got it boiled down, sit with it a while longer, because you’ll find that it can be refined even more. Somewhere, along the way, you’ll find yourself nestled back into a fresh, clean, simple story that everyone will understand.

What would YOUR refresh look like? Have you thought about it?

If you’re going to steal a laptop, make sure you know who you’re dealing with — one London teenager accused of stealing a laptop during the recent London riots certainly didn’t do his homework on who he was robbing.

Greg Martin, an IT security specialist and former FBI and NASA employee, came home to his West Kensington apartment last Wednesday to find that his place had been ransacked and his MacBook Pro was stolen.

Martin, who runs a blog called InfoSecurity 2.0, was obviously the wrong person to be stealing a laptop from — he had previously installed an open source tracking software called Prey on his computer. The free software “lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen,” the product’s website states.

A self-described hacker, Martin wrote on his blog:

“Almost two weary days had gone by since the robbery, and I’m at dinner on a business trip in Luxembourg, and I received an email which nearly knocked me out of my chair with excitement.”

The robber had finally logged on to the laptop — Martin went back to his hotel to stake out and gather evidence against the thief.

After two hours of watching the laptop thief surf the Internet, Martin was able to collect information on the man’s name, school, address, IP address, Internet service provider, wireless access point and Facebook ID number.

The thief’s Facebook information was the deciding piece of information for Martin — he sent the information on to the London Metro police and went to bed.

After details about the thief — identified as Soheil Khalilfar, 18 — were released to the police, the man’s apartment was raided and the laptop was recovered and returned to Martin.

Modern day thieves are at a much higher risk of being caught with the pervasiveness of technology.

In June, another MacBook thief was nabbed after the laptop’s owner tracked the thief using Hidden app and a Tumblr account.

via: BBC