Pinterest. One of those social networks everyone loves…or loves to hate. Whichever side you’re on, one thing is certainly true: Pinterest is the talk of the town. At SXSW or beyond. Dailies, magazines and blogs can’t stop writing about it, research companies can’t stop reporting on its record growth and brands are jumping into the “me too” bandwagon quicker than ever.

But it was not always the case. Contrary to what many people think, Pinterest is not really a new service. It was set up in November 2009 and believe it or not, nine months in it hadn’t even reached the 10k user base. The reasons why it still exists today is that its founders were too embarrassed to admit their failure. Luckily. Few months ago, the Pinterest craze just suddenly exploded. “It was weird and surreal”, said Ben Silbermann, Co-Founder of Pinterest, in today’s Q&A with blogger Chris Dixon.

The session was one to really enjoy, Ben Silbermann showed passion for his product that I haven’t seen here yet this week. Down to earth, an ex-Google employee, Ben always wanted to start his own tech company. A collector at heart, his personal passion for collecting stamps and coins, gave him an idea for Pinterest. “Things you collect say so much about who you are”, said Ben “and all I wanted to do is create a site that would help people discover, collect and share things they love.”

Design has always been at core of Pinterest. Simple product around people, pins and boards. Awesome boards, because if your collections wouldn’t look beautiful, why would anyone spend time building them.  Boards should be something users are proud of, something they want to show off to the people. Users have always been important to Ben, without them the site wouldn’t exist.

Even though most think the site is all cupcakes, rainbows and unicorns, there are some unexpected uses that even the founders of Pinterest have not predicted. Core lifestyle activities like decorating, cooking, home and design were the obvious guesses but the site is also used by museums to share their art or by travel aficionados to create travel guides. A recent Fake Mitt Romney account with yacht collections and great deals gave everyone a good laugh too.

What’s the future? New profiles, influencer identification, better content attribution and platform expansion. It looks like Pinterest is not going anywhere. Not anytime soon.

The Fashionista is less. Most of the crowd wanders around in washed through jeans, bleached T-shirts with silly slogans, old All Star slippers and a strategic piercing. But this is Austin, and a girl never knows when she might bump into her geek crush (Dennis Crowley!) … so I packed my dresses. A dress per day keeps the doctor away in Austin. Austin, the city where it never ever rain. Except for this week that is. It was pouring for 4 days and was colder than in a freezer.  So I had to go to the mall, and buy myself…jeans and sweaters. Trust me, in jeans and a hoodie, you totally blend in here at SXSW. But I wanted to stand out…ugh!

Then, there is the foodie in me. I stand for healthy, tasty food. Food made with love, and the best organic ingredients Mother Nature can grow. I am a vegetarian with a happy twist. Good food makes me happy, and is my battery. Only, Austin is not really made for food craving vegetarians. It is one giant steakhouse, where people barbeque heaps of pieces of cows, pigs and turkey. I try to stay as far from those BBQ joints as humanly possible. But their food is just hunting me, they bring it with food trucks everywhere I want to go. And when I finally escape in a dark alley, it’s only to  find myself surrounded by hotdog vendors and hamburger flippers. When I use my puppy eyes, so that people bring me something to eat, they show up with a bowl of green salad leaves. Marta the Rabbit.

I ate the salad, I ate most of the green plants. Tomorrow, I’ll be nibbling on the trees. I’m hungry. And only the social part of me is happy. Where is Dennis when a girl needs some comfort?

In the interview below, he tells us about how curation has evolved since last year’s SXSW and reveals plans for his new book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since the rise of social media, journalists have been using social networking to discover and follow stories. News crowdsourcing is hence not new but now comes in a new shape – NewsiT. Launched at this year’s SXSW Interactive – THE place of citizenship journalism and reporting – NewsiT is a mobile ‘crowd-reporting’ platform founded by Melinda Wittstock, a journalist with over 25 years of experience working for The Guardian, BBC, The Observer and ABC News.

NewsiT empowers people to get the word out on things that matter to them or report from breaking events they find themselves in the midst of. To encourage people to do so, NewsiT added an element of gamification to their app – for every piece of news users share, they are rewarded with points, badges and prizes. At SXSW, it is rumored that the user with the biggest amount of points will win an iPad.

What about the quality and legal assurance? Next to algorithms, NewsiT claims to have all content evaluated and double-checked by human editors.  I am curious to see how the app will be received at SXSW and beyond but for now I am off to earn my first mobile reporting points!

Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter from The New York Times and the author of “The Power of Habit”, knows why we do the things we do and how we can change that and has shared this secret with at his today’s session. What’s the secret? The Habit Loop!

It starts with a cue – something that triggers you to act in a certain way. The Cue is responded to with a routine behavior which is then rewarded. The more we engage in this pattern, the more automatic it becomes. Identifying the cues and the rewards can help us easily disrupt the cycle and change or create new habits. Like buying new or different products, for example

Yes, companies have been using the power of habits and the science of habit formation to manipulate our habits and what follows, increase sales. When P&G’s* new product – fabric refresher Febreze – was launched, it was advertised as a solution that will remove your bad smells (cue: bad smell; routine: use it; reward: no bad smell). Soon after, the product was on track on becoming a big money loser. Researching the problem, P&G discovered that people get accustomed to bad smells and do not sense them anymore. Trying to advertise getting rid of bad smells when people cannot even smell them could not have been too successful.

To find new ways to encourage people to using the product, P&G gathered specialists in habit formation and marketers in one room and examined people’s cleaning routines. That’s when they found that there is a certain satisfying moment in the cleaning process, the celebration of the moment right after. The reward. That fresh smell. Result? Having shifted the focus in advertising to that moment right after has transformed Febreze into a $1 billion hit!

Interested in the book? Find it here.

* P&G is a Porter Novelli client.

I first heard of dad bloggers when Sony launched its digidad project in 2009.  Since then, I’ve been following the evolution of this growing phenomenon, which, to my surprise has been received with mixed feelings.

I, personally, am a big fan. I think it is great dads want to talk about their take on being a parent and shows fatherhood in a completely new light. That’s why I was thrilled to find out that dad bloggers not only had their own panel at SXSW but they have their whole own conference – Dad 2.0 Summit happening at the same time as SXSW here in Austin!

I am a fan but not everyone is or has been from the start. I’ve seen mommy bloggers complain about dads trying to play on their playground, brands that refuse to acknowledge them as influencers because, as opposed to mommy bloggers, they don’t get time on national TV, fawning attention from media and they will never be able to create a kind of community mommies have. Dads are not important. Moms have the spending and decision-making power anyway.

First of all, the fact that they are uniting right now and right here in Austin proves that they are able to build a community. When it comes to buying decision power in the home, moms might have it but not in all product categories. Think consumer electronic brands, cars, razors – for them, it would make better sense to go after dad bloggers rather than mommy bloggers.  And no, dad bloggers might not have the same kind of attention from media and TV yet, but they do have the readership. And it’s not only male. Jason Avant, founder of DadCentric, confessed at the panel that 60% of his audience is female. So before you exclude dad bloggers from your next campaign, think twice.