The Place of Lost Hours

That is how I generally refer to Pinterest, right along with my comments about how amazing it is.  We use to avidly collect magazines and clippings of things that inspired us, which was no fun to go through when we decided to move out of our little house four years ago.  It was actually kind of humorous trying to figure out what inspired us to buy the magazine in the first place and then hang onto it for years.  The binders full of clippings seemed so dated, so irrelevant to our lives at that moment. 

Whenever I look at websites like Pinterest I wonder how they generate money.  How does Craigslist make money?  A friend of mine answered that question for me recently and I was pretty amazed that this disruptive website, which destroyed newspaper classifieds and handicapped the financial wellbeing of local newspapers, is pretty bare bones.

Craigslist makes money only through a handful of revenue streams. It charges a $25 fee to post a job listing in six major U.S. cities. It charges $75 for a job listing in the San Francisco area. Last, the company charges a $10 fee to list an apartment rental in New York. The revenues generated from these fees cover only the operating expenses of Craigslist. The company has not made a profit since its inception. This is intentional -- Craigslist president Jim Buckmaster has stated that creating a superior user experience is more important to the company than making money.

This is relevant to me because of a business idea I've been playing around with, and it's interesting that Craiglist has chosen to only cover its operating expenses.  At this point.  Presumably, Jim Buckmaster has a board of directors and investors that he must answer to, and if they choose to pursue larger revenue streams, he might not have the leverage to prevent them.

Anyway. 

The MiMBY Girl and I were on that Place of Lost Hours yesterday plotting a birthday party and we ran into these.  My new rule for time on Pinterest is don't just pin it, plan to do it.  Or better yet, do it already.  Her dad got involved to scale for more little figures on a page.  I helped with tracing to make a pattern for clothing and set her loose.  This is what she came up with:

Note the groovy fish scale pants.  Nice. 

The orange shoes are a perfect compliment to the large floral print.  MiMBY Girl has a good eye. 

Love the lace-up ballet slippers! 

All were sized to fit in an Altoid tin.  The clothing is fancy paper.  I love how my girl gets excited about this kind of stuff.  I foresee much doom when she can get to Pinterest on her own....