I’m not an amazing cook. But I can follow a recipe!  ~Rachel McAdams

Some may know what Pinterest is, and some may have heard of it, while others have absolutely no idea.  With the booming age of social media, there are sites popping up all the time.  For the most part, I really don’t pay attention to every little change and introduction of a social media site into the vast social world.  If I did, I wouldn’t have any time to blog and use the social tools that I do enjoy using.  However, there is one that has struck my fancy, and I have really adapted into my daily routine.  Pinterest!  It’s simply a social sight of pinning pictures and videos to your digital cork boards, just like being a kid again.

As a child, and even into my high school years, I would go through magazines and tear out pictures of dresses or shoes, and pin them to my cork board hanging on my bedroom wall.  In addition, I pinned recipes and ‘how to’ instructions.

Pinterest is the same concept, except you can have multiple themed boards, as many as you want, named however creative you can get, and it’s all digital!  Not to mention, instead of a single magazine, the entire internet is your resource.  How cool is that?  Plus, you have the option of uploading and linking your very own pins.  Love it!  As with a social site, the ability to “share”, “re-pin”, “comment” and “like” is available.  You can follow others of like interest, and your boards and pints are linked to other social sites for distributing information.

Kyle wanted to make his own hero sandwich 2012

Being in marketing, I tend to see trends early, and I will admit, I do sometimes partake on the latest and greatest.  This time I did.  Statistics change, now-a-days more rapidly than ever, but I still like to read the analyzed data.   After all, numbers never lie, and with summarized data, it’s sometimes easier to understand the focus of the social tool or the particular direction it’s moving toward.  When it comes to my clients, I do try to practice what I preach.  Pinterest is, as least as per the most recent numbers, 80%-90% women.  However, a majority of the purchases made on there are from men.  Not that I want to keep throwing numbers out there, but I find this fascinating, “66% of Pinterest users are aged 35 and older, compared to 64% of the US internet audience.” according to Marketing Charts.  Pinterest themselves stated, there are 20,000 items pinned on Pinterest every day.  Estimated numbers from AppData.com, state the two-year-old site has 11.7 million active registered users.  Wow!

So how did this almost too simple idea of themed digital cork boards come to fruition?  According to my “trust worthy” site Wikipedia, Pinterest was developed in December of 2009, then went into a closed beta test in March 2010, and in March of 2011 they launched their app.  Needless to say, Pinterest is pretty new to the scene, but growing leaps and bounds thanks to Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp, the founders.

Now why this dissertation on Pinterest?  Thanks to an article I read on Mashable, according to RJ Metrics, “17.2% of all pinboards are categorized under Home, followed by Arts and Crafts (12.4%), Style/Fashion (11.7%), Food (10.5%) and Inspiration/Education (9.0%). Of those, food is the fastest-growing category.”  I did read another article that stated recipes have clearly taken the top spot on the Pinterest pins, but unfortunately when I went to look for it, I couldn’t find the article to back up that claim.

As with all things on AuntHeather.com, all roads lead back to Kyle.  I want to tell and story about the impact of Pinterest and naturally it involves one little 11 year old boy.  I know I’ve mentioned that I used to have Kyle pick out recipes in the cookbooks, and we’d make whatever he wanted.  The only catch, he had to read me the recipe and measure out all the ingredients.  This was one way to reinforce reading with Kyle, especially when he went through a spurt of I HATE READING!.  It was also great practice with measuring and math skills, always a favorite of Kyle.  Who am I kidding?  I love to cook too, and to hang out with Kyle.  Win, win for me.  Little did I know, that Kyle would develop a love for cooking AND enjoy it!  I guess that’s a win, win for him too!

Now I’m getting to the meat and potatoes of the story.  Recently, a friend of mine, Kelly, was talking about making recipes that she found on Pinterest.  Last weekend, she was sending me some good ones to try, and she wanted to start making different recipes.  This conversation reminded me of Kyle, because we started to do the same thing.  In fact, Kyle has steered away from the old fashioned hardbound cookbooks, and tends to jump on my Pinterest account for recipes.  Yes, I said he goes on my Pinterest, and yes he has the password to log in.  What can I say, the kid owns me!  I don’t mind in the slightest.  Kyle knows to go to  board, and scroll through the pictures of the deliciousness.  It’s funny how our way of cooking has changed from even a year ago.  We still pretty much follow the same system of Kyle reading off the ingredients and directions, and I assist him with measuring and mixing, and he still gets to pick out what he wants to make.

Homemade Oatmeal Creme Pies, courtesy of Pinterest

Sometimes, Kyle uses my phone and jumps on the Pinterest app to search for different recipes he wants to try.  He is too much!  Usually the re-pins are sweet treats, although he surprises me with casseroles and low calorie or natural fruit dishes.  I’m not saying I’m any better with my own sweet tooth, but I do try and limit the dessert recipes made.

It’s amazing how our daily lives have changed, children are no longer pulling out the old cookbooks from generations past.  They are downloading them and cooking other family recipes online.  In one respect, I miss the use of a good old fashioned cookbook, but then again how can you beat the wealth of information and options at your fingertips.  I guess it doesn’t matter as long as the traditions are passed down, new traditions are started and shared, and cooking brings the family together.

See the recipe for the Oatmeal Creme Pies- Puppy Problem Called Seven.

The response was overwhelming.  I like to share what I have learned with others about everyday happenings as well as issues that make a difference in the world of business.  ~Bob Parsons

This past Monday, in the middle of the day, I noticed all my websites were down.  Yep, that means good old AuntHeather.com was down.  At first I thought it was something I did while making updates the night prior.  In disbelief over this outage, I turned to Facebook to see if others were experiencing issues.  I first saw the breaking news on Mashable – GoDaddy’s DNS Servers Go Down, Along With Thousands of Sites.   Evidently, anyone who had web hosting and domain names pointed from GoDaddy, were all down due to a hacker issue.

Monday night I had Kyle for his piano lessons.  During dinner I flipped on Channel 4 news, a bad habit while eating, and among other stories, I caught the one about GoDaddy going down.  As I was listening to the news, Kyle was half paying attention, strumming his guitar and playing with Storm.  I did make a comment on the GoDaddy situation, but again it didn’t seem to mean anything to Kyle and I didn’t think much of it until later that evening.

As Kyle and I were heading to his music lesson, a friend of mine was texting me, letting me know GoDaddy was back up again.  Naturally, Kyle checked my text messages while I was driving and read me the contents.  All of a sudden, he got this look on his face of complete fear and disbelief.  He asked me, “Aunt Heather does that mean our sites are down?  Even SpyRing?”  I said, “Yep, but Kelly said her sites are back up, which means ours should be too.  I’m going to look when we get inside.”  Spoken like a true business man, he said, “So how does anybody know about our stuff, if they don’t see it on our websites?”  Answering him, I said, “They won’t, that’s why it’s such a big deal, everyone associated with GoDaddy is down.”  Still in business mode, Kyle requested that I check our sites immediately when we get in the building.  He makes me laugh out loud!  I was planning on it, but it’s funny to see that Kyle feels the need to manage and direct me.

Upon conclusion of his piano lesson, he immediately went back into businessman mode and asked me about our sites.  “Aunt Heather, how’s SpyRing? and Thrill of the Hunt?”  I said, “All looks good, Piper Corporation and Aunt Heather are all back up.”  Naturally he didn’t care about my blog but it was neat to see his understanding for the value and importance of the company websites and his sense of urgency.

The next morning I read a story from CNN Tech – Hacker claims responsibility for GoDaddy outage.  The article claimed

“A person affiliated with the hacking collective Anonymous — named @AnonymousOwn3r on Twitter — claimed responsibility for the outage.”

Really?  Was that necessary?  If hackers need something to do, then I have a laundry list to put them to work.  There is no doubt, these hackers are a brilliant bunch and very intelligent, but they claimed to want to check the security of GoDaddy.  Really?  Was there act so selfless?  If that was the case, then don’t take down the company who in turn effects a large part of the population and their businesses, and not certainly for a better part of the day.  But then again, I’m no hacker, so what do I know.  Putting a positive spin on the situation, maybe GoDaddy has beefed up their security.

I can honestly say, I am a customer of GoDaddy’s and this situation has not changed my view of the company.  In fact, I thought they did a pretty good job returning things to their original state.  Personally I think GoDaddy is reasonably priced and they have GREAT customer service.  In the years that I’ve been a patron of GoDaddy, I’ve never had an issue.  I know I’m not the only one in this camp.  GoDaddy!

Also, thank you GoDaddy for the credit I received today because of the mishap.  That really helped to strengthen my view of your customer service.  I know you value and appreciate my patronage.