CNET editor Sharon Vaknin was supposed to write a story about Pinterest. In the process, she accidentally became addicted.
"I have to admit, I have been spending a lot of time on Pinterest," Vaknin said.
Billed as an online pinboard, the site lets you take your favorite links from all over the Internet and show them off together as colorful groups of pictures.
"So if I find a recipe that I like on a blog, I'll pin it to my recipe pinboard and if I find a blouse that I want to purchase, I put it on my fashion pinboard," Vaknin said.
It's astonishingly simple, fun to look at and now home to 10 million active users.
Mayka Mei is just one of those users. Her boards paint a picture of her taste.
"Music I've discovered or new designers I like because I tend to like more independent brands," she said.
Every link on Pinterest is a picture that other users can browse and re-pin if they like it.
"It works really well for an audience that's hyperconnected and doesn't read anything anymore," Mei said.
It's that very visual nature of Pinterest that attracted the marketing department at the San Francisco Ballet. They're using it to promote their latest production to what might be a whole new audience.
"A newer audience, it might be a younger audience, it might be a lot of people who have never been to a ballet performance," Carly Severn said.
With Romeo and Juliet opening next week, the ballet's created a renaissance-themed pinboard with more than just dance photos.
"Renaissance weaponry, sword fighting is a really important component of the production as well," Severn said.
And when you talk sharp things, you've got the attention of Jordan Perkins-Lewis. He likes to pin "manly things" like weapons and tattoos.
But Perkins-Lewis is in the minority. By some accounts, more than 90 percent of Pinterest users are women, with food and fashion the biggest topics.
"Weddings and babies are also big topics there, even for women who don't have any," Vaknin said.
It just so happens that Perkins-Lewis is getting married soon and he showed Pinterest to his fiancée.
"I said, 'You should check out this site,' and now she's obsessed, completely obsessed," Perkins-Lewis said.
