Posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 by Danny Davies
We all know about social bookmarking website Pinterest – it’s the biggest thing to hit the Internet since “Charlie Bit My Finger” on Youtube. And following its meteoric rise in early 2012 (it’s now the 39th most used website in the World!), we’ve noted a predictable but nevertheless interesting trend of websites cloning its trademark style, for different niche interests. These are the 10 best websites like Pinterest that we’ve found. Which will you choose to ‘fave‘?
ETSY – Etsy has been around for much longer than Pinterest, so it’s definitely more than another shopping website hidden behind a Pinterest style esthetic. It’s a global community of independent sellers – who upload images of their handmade, vintage and jewellery items and share them with the world. The main difference here is that you actually do your shopping on Etsy, whereas on Pinterest you just look, admire and click links. In fact, if you’re on Pinterest, there’s a high chance you may have ‘pinned’ some of the cool item you’ve found on Etsy! Click here to take a look around, and click here to ‘fave it’!
Pinterest has an overwhelmingly female majority of users (80% according to the most recent statistics). But that’s left a growing number of humans of the male variety searching tirelessly for a place of their own to put all of the funny images they find from across the web. We’ve got 2 contenders for the crown of best Pinterest for Men for you to pick between: Manteresting and Gentlemint. Comment below to back your favorite!
GENTLEMINT is our first contender for best Pinterest for men: It’s a social bookmarking tool for men to save cool, interesting pictures and articles from around the web, as Pinterest is. The difference being that you ‘mint it’ instead of ‘pin it’ when you see something you like. The site’s layout is far more minimalist, which works in its favor, although at the moment there’s a huge queue of men holding invites, waiting to get in at the door, so you’ll have to join the line! Whether it’s worth the wait only time will tell, but for now, Gentlemint has a rather refined, interesting selection of articles and pictures to browse on your coffee break.
MANTERESTING is probably even more Pinterest-like than it’s co-combattant for the crown of best Pinterest for men: It’s very much taking advantage of the popular grid of tiled images, with comments and likes underneath. Manteresting looks and feels a lot less sophisticated than Gentlemint – half naked ladies, volcanic eruptions and funny pictures of tropical animals. And that’s the way Manteresting’s creators and users love it. And there’s no need for an invite so you can dive straight in for your fix of manliness.
SPRINGPAD is, as bookmarking websites go, the closest site we’ve found to a Pinterest for Business. It’s all about collecting and curating articles and images, Pinterest-style (just with ‘notebooks’ instead of ‘pinboards’ – they even look the same!), but there’s definitely a business slant at Springpad. You’ll find curated collections of articles, apps and projects for entrepreneurs for example, and they’re set out really clearly in the notebooks. So if you’re looking to save your ideas (you can even record voice memos and notes to your Springpad notebook too!) from anywhere and access them any time you want, in a business context, Springpad would be a great site to try.
DRIBBBLE is like Pinterest in that it’s all about showing and telling, but this bookmarking website is aimed at a very specific niche: designers. For us normal folks, the images and contents are high quality and original productions by designers; but for designers Dribbble is a great way to spread your work. You can explore the website by buckets, colors, projects, tags and even better find designers by location, skills and availability. Another great feature is the job bank for designers. Dribbble then is like Pinterest, but better serves as proof that specializing – instead of trying to reach the whole market – can be an brilliantly designed idea!
TRIPPY is a Weekly Fave we reviewed at the turn of the year. At the time, Trippy was very much a travel planning website where you get your friends to help you plan trips based on their recommendations. We took another look this week, and noticed it’s had a very Pinterest-like makeover. In fact, it’s pretty much a travel only collection of Pinterest boards now – you can even pin photos to your own Trippy “boards” with its bookmarking tool! So that means that on top of a social trip planning site, you can now browse photos of resorts and destinations to get your inspiration. The interesting part is that you can share your “boards” with your friends to help the planning process. Click here to check it out.
ALL MY FAVES – Oh, ok so this is us. We’re not just a reviewer of awesome websites, but predominantly we’re a Pinterest-like bookmarking tool, for your favorite websites: Whenever you see a website you like, you just press the ‘Fave it’ button (yes we did copy Pinterest on this one!), and boom, it’s saved to your online + mobile homepage. It’s an easy way to organize your bookmarks, as many of our users willl tell you, because you can see all of them visualized as logos and simply take them anywhere, on any device! Click here to try moving your bookmarks onto an All My Faves Homepage – could be the best decision you make today.
Pinterest may be for dreaming, but LOVER.LY is for both dreaming AND planning. 
It’s a Pinterest-style bookmarking site for wedding planning. And it’s an excessively colorful, flowery, sugary overdose of wedding fever… or, in other words, exactly what any girly girl dreams of! Pinterest has an abundance of boards with wedding themed images to browse, but as with Dribbble above, Lover.ly has focused in on a niche and sticks to it brilliantly. You can browse through a huge collection of images to inspire your special day, and you can add them to your own collections of ideas on the site, with the ‘heart’ and ‘plus’ buttons provided. So click here to get dreaming and planning (and stressing out your future husband to be).
500px – As described by it’s editor, this website is “a photo community powered by creative people worldwide that lets you discover, share, buy and sell inspiring photographs.” So it’s got a different angle immediately from Pinterest. Yes, you’re still browsing through a series of awesome looking images, but at 500px, there are 2 features that completely differentiate it, and make it a 100% go-to site for art. One, you can actually buy the art you take a liking to while browsing (instead of just ‘liking’, commenting or ‘re-pinning’ it); and two, in an interesting section called “Stories”, users tell a brief anecdote or tale by using their own pictures, which turns out to be a both an inspiring and interesting way of sharing.
PINVOLVE – This is a Pinterest app that enables your fans to browse your Facebook page as if it was Pinterest. 
It’s basically just a fun, novelty way for people to browse through the – of course – awesome content you post to your page.
PINVIEW – One of Pinterest’s main feature is it’s appearance. It’s hard to resist a website which offers the best images at the first sight and lets you scroll down for more so easily. Pinview is an app that takes the design and functionality of Pinterest and plonks it right onto your Facebook news feed, turning all the images and videos your friends, contacts, acquaintences and unfortunate Facebook adds from the office Christmas party 2009, into a huge Pinterest style pinboard. Pretty cool if you ask us!
The Fancy – not exactly a knockoff, it’s unclear which came first, and it’s even arguable that The Fancy is better! It’s a similar concept to Pinterest – you ‘Fancy stuff’ We really dig it at All My Faves. Unlike Pinspire, which is very clearly a 100% (albeit blue) knockoff of Pinterest made by the infamous Samwer Brothers out in Germany.
There’s numerous photo bookmarking websites that aren’t Pinterest, but which basically copy it in their quest for Internet glory, that are also worth a look. These sites have their merits too, and include PICCSY, PICOCOOL and WE HEART IT. The greatest knockoff of them all however, is quite possibly PINSTAGRAM… you can guess where this one’s going!
