If you’re a photographer or simply post a lot of your own photos on your blog, you may not want Pinterest users to be able to leech them on to their pinboards. There’s a very simple hack to prevent the Pinterest system from letting its users pin your photos. Simply add a meta tag to the headers in your blog template or theme as follow:

<meta name=”pinterest” content=”nopin”>

This will not be visible on your web pages, but it will be seen by Pinterest’s system when someone tries to pin your snaps. There are WordPress plugins that will automate the addition of this meta tag if you don’t want to mess with your html code. Those should be straight quotes when you use the tag.

According to Wikipedia: Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social photo and image sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. The site’s mission statement is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”

Pinterest is managed by Cold Brew Labs, a team based in Palo Alto, California, and apparently surveys suggest that is particular popular adult female internet users planning their weddings, although that sounds like a spurious claim to me and I’d like to see the demographic analysis in full.

If you’re not convinced of the potential of Pinterest for getting the word out about your blog then check out this article, which may convince you. Needless to say, I’ve been on Pinterest a while, but was until now only investigating its ins and outs. I’ve added a few sample pins.