Top 10 Pinterest Alternatives For Marketers

With more than 16 million unique visitors in March 2012, pinterest is currently one of the most popular social media sites on the Web. and just like all successful startups, the social pinboarding site has inspired many copycats that range in topics from retail to design to . . . men.

These niche sites can be utilized by Web marketers looking for specific audiences to which they can target their strategies, or by designers simply looking for inspiration. What follows are some of the Pinterest clones that have arrived on the scene in recent months, as well as one or two similar sites that have been around even longer than Pinterest.

SparkRebel

SparkRebel is a fashion-inspired discovery and social shopping destination that is currently in Beta. The fashion and beauty focused site contains 19 categories for users to browse. SparkRebel also features brand pages that allow vendors to curate and share products and content with members. The site includes prices and a “buy it” icon on content pages that redirects consumers to a separate site in order to finish the purchase.

Stylepin

This site allows users to collect and organize images for fashion and style inspiration. Stylepin is targeted only for fashion and style, so no pictures of dogs and random quotes allowed. It includes a print generator that enables users to select photos from their pins and turn them into PDF, DOC or ZIP fi les that can be printed. Users must request an invite to use Stylepin.

Dribbble

This niche site caters to a community of designers by enabling users to display small screenshots of their work. The site also enables members of the community to provide feedback to one another, and allows users to gain inspiration by browsing through images categorized by colors and popular tags such as logo, website, app and button.

Image Spark

This site lets users collect, discover, share, tag and converge images that inspire them towards creative designs. Users can create moodboards that enable them to set a visual tone for their images. Users also have the option to keep their images private so that others do not have access to their projects and ideas. Image Spark is free to use and provides users with 1GB of storage and two moodboards.

Design:Related

This site was founded in 2006 and is more of an online portfolio for design professionals than a social pinboarding site. Users must request an invite to join the community, where they can upload images into portfolios, post inspirational content, search for jobs and browse through other users’ content. It is kind of like a combination of Pinterest and LinkedIn for designers.

Manteresting

While many have claimed that Pinterest is geared towards women, there is no denying that Manteresting is not. Instead of pinning content, Manteresting users nail their content to profiles in categories called “workbenches.” Currently, Manteresting is in Beta, but invites are not required. Instead, users can sign up through Twitter, Facebook or email.

Gentlemint

This is another male-focused bookmarking website that is very similar to Pinterest in its look and feel. The site is currently open by invitation only, and according to the American Moustache Institute, Gentlemint is “one of the more manly websites on the planet.”

Fancy

Instead of pinning photos, users of this site “Fancy” their content. Users browse through fancied content and search for product deals to make purchases directly on the site. It seems like an especially good Pinterest alternative for retailers.

Juxtapost

This postboard site allows users to sign up without invitations, provides the option to keep postboards private and share them privately, export content to an Excel spreadsheet, index photos by colors and find similar content through a “more like this” button. Juxtapost includes 18 different categories for users to explore, and it may be one of the best Pinterest alternatives out there.

Visualize.us

This bookmarking site also allows users to sign up without an invitation and it makes bookmarking easy by providing an extension for Firefox or buttons for other browsers. The main page displays a list of popular tags so that users can quickly find the type of content they are looking for, from typography to landscapes. VisualizeUs provides users with numerous tags and images to browse through and discover.