Pinterest has given itself the right to sell and distribute pinned images.  Well, technically, you give them permission as soon as you pin an image on their site.

It’s in their terms of use, you know that long boring section that websites tell you to read and then check the the box proving that you’ve read it and agree with the terms before you proceed, which few to none actually read, but check the box anyway.  Well, here’s what it says…

By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.

Whoa, am I reading that right?  If I pin an image of my artwork on their site, I’m giving them license to do with it as they please.  Nothing like giving your artwork away.

Now, what if someone else pins an image of my artwork on Pinterest?

Pinterest does prohibit the posting of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder.  Again, it’s in their terms of use as follows…

you represent and warrant that: (i) you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms; and (ii) neither the Member Content nor your posting, uploading, publication, submission or transmittal of the Member Content or Cold Brew Labs’ use of the Member Content (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site, Application and the Services will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other proprietary or intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy…

Here’s the rub….  Prohibited or not, copyrighted images are being pinned without permission.  And Pinterest knows it.  So, they are trying to address the issue.  Here’s how.  They have created a code that website owners, like you and me, can add to the head area of our pages to “opt out” of Pinterest, so images from our sites do not get posted on Pinterest.

OK…..  So, I can “opt out” of Pinterest, a website that I’m not even a member of, to try to keep my artwork from getting posted onto their website.  Is this a mess or what?  Once again, we are forced to take extra steps to protect our work.

Here’s the code:    <meta name=”pinterest” content=”nopin” />

If a Pinterest member tries to pin an image from a site that has this code in the head, they will see the following:

This Message Box Pops Up

Now they are warned.  Will this stop the pinning?  Maybe. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

I see that Flickr is using the nopin code.  That warms my heart to know that they have taken this step to protect all the artists who use their service.

And yes, I’m adding this code to my website pages.  No Pinterest for my artwork!

Artists, these are my opinions based on my research, please check things out and decide for yourselves.  And feel free to share your thoughts and discoveries in the comment area.

So, go ahead and click on that “Learn More” button, see what to do and get to it.  Facebook also has a very nice overview of the new Pages at www.LearnFacebookPages.com.

Pictures, pictures…..  Facebook is a huge picture place.  Three main ones you’ll want to change on your FB Pages Timeline.

1.  The Cover:  850 x 315 pixels, just like the Profile Cover.  But there are rules.  Even though this is a business Page, FB doesn’t want people to get carried away.  (It’s their website, they can make rules. Ps… this is why every business needs to have its own website.)

• No contact information or website address
• No sales related content (prices or purchase info)
• No reference to Facebook features such as Like or Share buttons or arrows pointing from the cover to any of these features.
• No Calls to Action
• Note:  Put your contact info in the About area.  Do it right and it will show up under your Profile Picture.
• This Cover picture has to show the essence of your business without lots of words.

2.  Profile Picture:  It gets carried over from your old Page and put in that little box at the base of the Cover.  To change it, just scroll over it and click the edit button.  It needs to be at least 180 x 180 pixels for upload.

3.  Tab & App Pictures:  The Tabs now run across the page under your Cover.  If you have made your own Tab pages, such as a Welcome page, an Optin box page, etc., you can make your own thumbnail image to replace the Facebook Tab image.  It can’t be any larger than 111 x 74 pixels.

(Note:  You may have to be persistent with this feature.  It seems to be loaded with bugs.  Other images pop up besides the one I’m trying to upload.  Not a clue where they are coming from.) 

Other Items:

1.   The Landing page tab is gone.  If you have a Welcome tab that new visitors land on instead of the wall; that will no longer happen.  Everyone lands on the wall.  But then, you have that wonder Cover picture.  One picture is worth a 1000 words.  This is where you are going to do just that.

2.    The Tab & App Urls.  These are still available.  You can copy the URL to any of your apps and post them on and off of Facebook to drive traffic to that Tab page.

3.    Change the order of your Tabs.  You can have up to 12 of these Apps, but only 4 of them are on display under the Cover image.  The first on is your Photos, that can not be moved.  The others can.  You can swap them around.

4.    Personal Messages.  People can now leave you messages via your Page.   You do have to option of turning this off in your Admin area.  With more people using FB to contact people, you may want to keep this on for business leads.  You can’t initiate contact with this message center, but you can respond to messages you receive through here.

5.    The new Interest Lists.   This is a new feature, came out in early March, 2012.    Folks can add your page to one of their Interest Lists.  These are lists based on topics, a great way of grouping Pages into Lists.

6.    Pin a Post.  Another new feature for Pages.  Pinning a post keeps it on the top of the wall for 7 days.  Then it will automatically move down with the next posting.  The downside to this one might be visitors thinking you’ve not updated your page for days.  (Which happens to some of us anyway.)  But hey, maybe you’ve got a new address location or something important that you don’t want visitors to miss.

7.  Highlight posts.  Just like in the Profile Timeline, on pages you can “double wide” an important post or image.

8.  Adjusting post photos.  Again, just like in your Profile you can click the edit pencil on uploaded wall photos and do a photo Reposition.

9.  Editing Your Page.  In the old Page version there is an Edit Page button in the Upper right.  Now, click the Admin Panel > Manage > Edit Page.  From there you’ll see the familiar list of items in the left hand column.  You can go to Manage Permissions from here and decide who can do what on your Page.

10.  Your Milestones.  A Timeline feature that also exists on your Profile; where you can click on the timeline that runs down the center of your Page and add items anywhere to your timeline.  On Pages it’s called Milestones, on Profiles it’s called Life Events.

 Download this post in pdf format.

For more information about the Facebook Page changes check out these other resources:

Facebook Overview of Pages on Facebook.com in PDF format.

Facebook Page Guidelines on Facebook.com.

And this great article about Facebook pages on KissMetrics.com.

Picasso

I just read a fantastic article by Pamela Wilson over at Copyblogger.com titled “The Picasso Guide to Becoming a Social Media Legend.”

For those of you non-reading artists, the article does scroll down a ways, but it’s really worth the read.  You’ll learn some interesting things both about Picasso as well as Social Media.

Rather you’re a Picasso art fan or not, the man definitely operated some disciplines in his life that we all can learn something from.

• Change your game, because the game is always changing.

• Get a posse.

• Draw inspiration from the world around you.

• Work. Work. Work. And work some more.

So, head on over to Copyblogger and enjoy the read.

Finally, some individuality is coming back to the Profile pages of Facebook.  It’s really quite exciting.   Anyway, I’m very excited about.  Yes, I know….. more changes.  Oh how we humans hate change and grumble at Facebook for constantly making us go through change after change after change.

But, really.  You’re going to enjoy this one.  It’s going to make it fun to cruise around and look at everyone’s Profile pages.  Most of the time we never even visit our “friends” Profiles.  Why should we, they all look alike.

The only difference is that small mug shot over on the left.  And maybe once in a while we stop in to check out the picture albums.  But all of this can be done from our own Home page, so why take the time to venture out.

Here’s a picture of my new Timeline on Facebook (with some notes attached to it.)

The Cover is like a large website header.  You can upload your favorite picture or create something special that represents who you are.  And we can change the Cover whenever we want.  Yes, this is going to make cruising FB fun again.

When is it coming to everyone.  Well….. it was suppose to be the end of Sept, then early in Oct 2011.  I don’t know.  When it’s ready I guess….   Learn more about the new Profile Timeline.

This is an optional function.  Not everyone is going to have a Subscribe button because they either don’t know about it yet or they don’t want it.  This is a great add-on for people who have reached their 5000 limit.  (Celebrity status type folks.)

If you are already Friends with someone, then you are automatically subscribed, of course.

Why did Facebook add it?  It’s a function to work like Twitter and the Google +1.  Social Media sites are always looking to out-do each other, I quess.  It’s to “follow” someone.

If you would like to add the Subscribe button to your Profile go here:
https://www.facebook.com/about/subscribe  and click on the big button on the right of the page.  Be sure to take the time to check the set up for exactly who it is that can subscribe.  You do have control over this.

So, if you swear up and down that you’re missing something and you know it should be there, well, it probably is, it’s just not being shown to you at the moment because Facebook decided it wasn’t important enough.

Set up Your Own Feeds with Lists

The left column of your Home contains all of your “Feeds.”  When you create Lists, you turn them into news feeds.  The more friends you get, the more active you become, the more important it is to create Lists.

Once you’ve created a List, then click on it in the left column, it opens in the center as a news feed and you’ll see the status update of every person you added to that List.

Facebook knows this is important, they do get something very very right, and have added a Close Friends List for you to get started in building your Lists.

So get going on this one.  It will make your Facebook life so much easier.