Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?

Mark McGuinness posted a great article on the Pinterest for artists issue, Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?. A lot of good points there, but do not stop with the article itself or with links to posts in other art marketing blogs about Pinterest. There is a lengthy and insightful discussion in the comments very well worth reading (I could not help but add my $0.02 too).

To me, the amount of attention that Pinterest is getting is amazing. How comes that images of artworks have been shared everywhere for a long while now, from Facebook to Tumblr, often without artist’s consent, and nobody made a big deal out of it? Or did opponents of image sharing only now caught up to the new reality? Is it really such a big deal? Pins are small, unfit for reproduction, even on a very amateurish level. Plagiarism concerns? Artists risk that every time they put their creation on display. Traffic stealing? Now that was probably the most unusual claim I’ve heard, complete with the total lack of supporting facts. Puzzling…