What Can Pinterest Do for Radiology?

The rapid growth of social media over the last decade soon convinced businesses including medical practices and academic medical centers to enter the social media fray—for profit, education, and expanding access. Launched in 2010, Pinterest (San Francisco, CA, USA) differed from many of the established social media platforms by presenting collection and curation features based on the sharing of images rather than text. Thus, Pinterest allows users to categorize website links using photos, GIFs, and videos, and catalog them for future consideration, saved on a virtual folder or “pinboard.” Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are text-heavy social media platforms that do not allow for significant curating activities. Instagram, the other of the two primary photo-oriented social media giants, was launched the same year as Pinterest. Owned by Facebook, Instagram caters to a more personal experience and mostly relies on mobile technology. Because Pinterest users are mainly focused on finding and collecting other users’ content, Pinterest is thought to generate website traffic and is more conducive to use on larger screens. It further distinguishes itself by encouraging appreciation/learning over self-promotion and its range of categories exceeds that of other such sites. Some of the more visually oriented medical specialties (i.e., dermatology, plastic surgery, and radiology) have begun to consider what role, if any, the popular site Pinterest, with more than 250 million monthly users, might play in disseminating healthy messages, reaching patients, and contributing to medical education. We investigated how Pinterest could work for our radiology education mission and then decided to establish a presence on the site to ascertain if creating our own board would have any practical benefits.