I was a finalist for the 2013 Shorty Award for ‘Best Pinterest User.’

In the end, no winner was selected this year, but thank you to everyone who supported me with a nomination.

I promise to try and take my Pinterest account to new levels in 2013.

This is only the beginning.

Stay tuned.

Facebook reached fame, scale and profitability before Pinterest. And that is a worthy accomplishment in the digital realm. Facebook is run by razor sharp individuals across a variety of fields. They are doing very well for themselves.

However, Pinterest offers a superior user experience. Pinterest gives you a blank canvas that you can shape and mold to your personality. Facebook gives you a very strictly designed box and has you fill in all the blanks. Facebook is good for people who want their online lives to be automated and auto filled. But for people who want to infuse their digital life with their own will and personality and taste, Pinterest is unsurpassed.

On Pinterest you can differentiate yourself from other users. You can shape peoples’ encounters with you by what you choose to feature. Facebook reads more like a social resume. It has reduced us all to the same set of data. Which it is mining for advertising.

Pinterest could well be mined too. It’s an entire ecosystem built around what people love. Facebook is centered around today, with a timeline that stretches out to our near past. Pinterest is a forward looking service. It’s a crystal ball that we can inform. It lets users plant the seeds of their own future. It deals in inspiration. There is a value in stalking someone on Pinterest. Stalking someone on Facebook only fuels idle gossip.

Pinterest has the potential to move us all forward. It has the potential to own the visual web. It has the potential to show us where we can go next. You can see Pinterest’s power by how many imitators have sprung up in the past year and a half. How many websites are imitating Facebook?

Facebook built the foundation of the social web. Pinterest is poised to leapfrog with inspiration and innovation.

Not all of the time. But most of the time.

The Internet can be our time machine. It can help propel us in the direction we want to go next. It can amplify our intentions. It can connect us with who we need to know next.

Or we can tread water. We can simply say what we are doing right now. We can over-connect and over-share. We can make the internet about cats and lunches and all of the other topics that represent us at our lowest common denominator.

When you find yourself staring at an update box, type something that will get you closer to where you want to be. Someone who might be able to help you will see it. Post things that you make, not only the things you observe. If you put effort into what you pour into the internet, the outcome might surprise you. I’ve been surprised enough times to feel the potential of the internet. And I want to feel it more.

I want us all to achieve our potential instead of merely hanging out.

I was dismissive when I first heard about ‘smart glasses.’ It sounded like innovation for innovations sake. I wanted to know the reason why wearing a computer on my face would trump my current flow that involves carrying a supercomputer in my pocket.

The simple thought that converted me was this scenario: Imagine having a real-time, fluid conversation with someone who spoke a language that you didn’t understand at all. Imagine wearing a pair of glasses that had the processing power and ability to relay real-time translations of what the other person was saying. Imagine the person across from you having access to the same power.

This is revolutionary. This is the benefit of computers WITHOUT interfaces. It’s not about the form factor. It’s about second-nature computing. It’s not about automating tasks to justify processing power. It’s about delivering real-world, never possible before value.

That is how you change the world. By allowing people to do what has never been done, and making that power available to all. We will all win in that kind of scenario.

PIN VOLUME.

Because I have earned over 1 million followers on Pinterest, I am often asked how to get more followers. The simplest thing I can recommend is to PIN MORE OFTEN. When people email me links to their Pinterest pages, I usually see that they have less than one hundred pins. If you think about that from a potential user perspective, it looks like they aren’t serious about Pinterest. It looks like they have stopped pinning. Potential users are looking to follow people who will provide them a steady stream of quality images that they can in turn repin. If you only have 37 pins from the day you read that article about Pinterest on Mashable, you are not going to randomly blow up. I have been consistently using Pinterest from the beginning, and now have nearly 10,000 pins on my boards. I am on Pinterest to stay. That attracts users. Users are attracted by power users. The more followers you get, the more followers you will get. Uber-success is viral. The way to go viral on Pinterest is to get repinned a ton. Post more images, on a regular basis and you will increase your odds of going Pintrest viral.

Many people ask me how to get more followers on Pinterest.

Many people send me links to their profiles and ask me to evaluate what they are doing. I see a lot of basic things that make their profiles seem like an empty home. No profile photo. No basic information. And just a dozen or so pins. I will never follow a profile that doesn’t look committed to pinning. When I decide to follow some one, it’s because I assume that they will give me a steady stream of inspiring photos that I can use to repin to my own boards.

Beyond the basic maintenance of a profile and habitual usage, the number one most important thing a Pinterest user needs to grow a following is great taste. Taste is a very subjective term, but I get the feeling a lot of people who send me their boards don’t consider it too much.

Taste at a basic level means having photos and images that are pleasant to look at. Avoid pinning blurry or poorly cropped photos. I don’t want to follow someone who is going to pollute my stream with substandard quality images. When I am looking for people to follow, I look for sophisticated taste, unusual angles, unusual points of view, unusual subject matter. I avoid users who only pin from their own website, or who only pin infographics.

Taste can be learned and acquired by looking at thousands and thousands of images and noticing what types of images stand out after hitting your saturation point. Taste will vary from user to user, but unless you put in the time to think about it, your pins will have no point of view and you will offer me no value. Therefor I will not follow you. And I won’t be the only one.

Demonstrate great taste and pin often and you will see your followers multiple exponentially.

Click here to see my Pinterest boards, followed by over one million users across subjects like Sports, Film and Design.