virtualDavis

Pinterest Hacked: Semi-Nude Fat Loss Pics Posted (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been trimming the girth for a year or two, but this is too much! Semi-nude fat loss pics have swallowed up virtualDavis on Pinterest. Over night. Not cool. Fortunately a friend apprised me of the violation, and after purge, purge, purging the semi-nude fat loss pics (read, affiliate advertisements by an unscrupulous hacker) I’ve dug around to discover I’m not alone.

One board “Weight Loss: Loose Weight Fast” had 76 pins! (And, clever spammer, I think you meant, “Lose Weight Fast”, nest pas?)

My pinterest account was hacked and they posted women’s before-and-after diet pics. I was most offended by them spelling “lose” as “loose.” ~ jamey w. bennett (@jameybennett) September 18, 2013

And another…

apparently @pinterest accounts can be hacked now. no, I didn’t voluntarily make a board called “weight loss” and pin “secrets” all over it. ~ Lauren Ferrante (@lferrante) September 18, 2013

Pinterest Hacking Pandemic?

Pinterest Hacked

Hope not, but a good wake up call to pincers and Pinterest that they are vulnerable and need to be proactive. Here’s their official advise for dealing with boards or pins on your account that you didn’t create:

It’s possible someone got into your account. You should reset your password to secure your account:

1. Click the profile menu then click Settings
2. Click Change your password…
3. Type in your old password
4. Choose a new password – make sure it’s complex!

After you’ve reset your password, you can delete any pins or boards that were added to your account. Unfortunately, we can’t restore deleted boards or pins. If you have trouble resetting, try from http://pinterest.com/password/reset/ (Pinterest Help Center)

Pinterest Lessons Learned

At least some fat loss affiliate programs cater to (or tolerate) unscrupulous spammers. The kind who target creepers obsessed with semi-nude women. Fat semi-nude women.

Pinterest needs to develop an easier, quicker, smarter interface for deleting multiple images at once. This should not be hard. Git’er done. Please.

Mean people suck. And they make us calloused, which also sucks.

Semi-Nude Laugh Therapy

I’d be remising in closing this grumbly post without returning to my all time favorite analgesic. Humor. So let’s wrap with an example of the lighthearted souls who don’t take these sorts of “crises” too seriously.

“Oh no, someone hacked my Pinterest,” the girl cried as she checked to make sure her cat photos and recipes were okay. ~ Ashley Burns (@MayorBurnsy) May 14, 2013

Pinterest Interest? virtualDavis ponders Pinterest...

Are you on Pinterest? Still trying to resist the way you resisted Facebook?

Watch out, because it’s a slippery slope. When your invitation comes and you say, “Okay, well, maybe I’ll just try it out…”

You know, kick the tires, maybe even zip around the neighborhood with the roof down and the music blaring?

Don’t do it. You’ll get hooked. Pinterest. Is. Addictive.

And that’s why it’s exploding. In the good way. Out of start-up obscurity and into the gotta-be-on-it rocket that is flashing through the interwebs.

After being largely ignored for the first months of its existence, Pinterest is now being mentioned with increasing frequency… It is easy to see why Pinterest is attracting such a buzz. All measures of its growth are phenomenal. (Street Journal)

Phenomenal is the right word, but it lacks the necessary whizbang to accurately convey what’s happening with this rather straightforward social media concept

The premise behind Pinterest is for users to gather, organize, and share things they find on the Web, such as home decorations, clothing, and food. The end result is curated pinboards that are meant to help friends discover new items or get inspiration. (CNET News)

According to Mashable‘s Zoe Fox, Pinterest drives more online t than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. Beginners’ luck? That’s pretty formidable competition.

[Pinterest] now beats YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January… Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic, while Twitter just barely edged ahead of the newcomer, accounting for 3.61% of referral traffic. (Mashable)

You know how long it took Twitter

to get traction? You know how long it’s taken to get to this point. I suspect that the quirky crew over at Facebook are getting whiplash responding to the ticklish breeze they keep feeling in their hair, like something sneaking up from behind. Can you sneak fast? Okay, so maybe Pinterest isn’t sneaking…

Facebook reigns king of referrals, accounting for more than one-quarter (26.4%) of traffic, 4.3% of which comes from Facebook Mobile. After Pinterest, Facebook is experiencing the most referral growth, gaining almost one percentage point in December. (Mashable)

So Facebook isn’t giving up ground just to swig down electrolytes, but Pinterest’s mad dash out of the starting gates is noteworthy. Whether or not they can sustain this pace for the endurathon is another matter.

Who’s propelling its rise? 18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland. (TechCrunch)

Hmmm… So not just bored teenagers party shopping.

To get to the bottom of what motivates Pinterest’s throngs of users, you first have to realize who those users are… Female… women tend to like to shop more than men do. You could easily define Pinterest as a way for people to “window shop” for anything that interests them… It’s a social shopping experience, disguised as a website full of interests. (TheNextWeb.com)

Brad McCarty may be right, but in my experience, there are plenty of gents aboard the good rocket ship Pinterest and more and more every day. Maybe there are male window shoppers too? Or maybe McCarty’s oversimplifying.

At heart, many of us are collectors. Stickers. Friends. Hats. Wine. Cars…

And many of us are voyeurs, happy to peak over the fence at the neighbor’s backyard digging project only discover he was planting a persimmon tree, not installing a hot tub.

In short, we’re curious hoarders on the lookout for inspiration. Is it any wonder that Pinterest has become the next runaway favorite? And with news a little over a week ago that Pinterest has partnered with Flickr “improve photo attribution” it looks like the visual floodgates may be opening. Happy pinning!

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