Often find yourself searching or researching online and trying to remember which sites you visited contained what you were looking for? Wanting to try the recipe you saw on a blog last week but can’t remember the url?

You need Pinterest…one of the latest social networks that is taking virtual organization to a whole new level.

Launched in December 2009, Pinterest is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests. Once joining the site you can create and manage theme-based image collections and follow other boards to gain new ideas and build on your collections.

Pinterest is free to use and very user friendly. Currently you must request an invite in order to join and once you have been accepted you can login through your social media accounts. Upon joining you will download the pin bookmarklet, which will appear in your browser. Next, create a series of boards to help you organize your ideas. Pinterest can help by suggesting different board topics, such as Cool Posters, Wishlist, recipes, etc, or you can create original ones as well. When you are browsing the web and see an image you would like to pin, click “Pin it” on your browser and the images from the website will appear. Next, select the image you would like to pin and choose which board you would like to add it to, add a description and when done, click Pin It.

Though pinning ideas while searching the web is helpful, most people find the best part of Pinterest to be browsing boards of other members to get new inspiration from someone who has similar interests as you. When you find something you like you can simply “repin” and add to one of your boards.

In August 2011 Time Magazine published Pinterest in its “50 Best Websites of 2011” column. Additionally, in December 2011, the site entered into the top 10 Social Networks according to Hitwise data with 11 million total visits per week.

Feeling inspired? Request an invite today and pin away!

http://pinterest.com/