Hayley Eselevsky, Student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

There is a reason why halfway through writing this blog post, I found myself carelessly pinning pictures on Pinterest: IT'S SO ADDICTING!

For those of you who don’t know about Pinterest, it is a virtual and customizable bulletin board you can share with your friends. Each user can create an account and can follow their friends to see what everyone is posting on their boards. Individual boards can range from “Beauty” to “Clothes I Want” to even “Sports.” You pin the images you like on your individual board and you can even re-pin what other people pin onto theirs.

All of the commotion is very similar to what I like to call "the StumbleUpon fad of 2011." People love it so much because it is so customizable to oneself. If you don’t like what you see, you can rearrange your boards.

We live in a world in which everyone likes to show their friends and acquaintances what they like. Pinning on Pinterest is basically a “me-fest” of “I like this.” This isn’t to sound cynical, believe me, I LOVE Pinterest. But, this isn’t to say that most of my boards contain the word “I” in them.

Let’s face it, we love to show others our thoughts and wants.

Another addicting and nice thing about Pinterest is that you can connect it to your Twitter or Facebook accounts and have your friends and followers see what you are pinning.

You can literally find anything you want on Pinterest. You can create boards for fitness, health, celebrities, music, beauty and more. Pinterest really is one consolidated place for all of your likes and dislikes. Personally, I love to see what my friends are pinning to their boards, whether it is a hip fashion picture or if it’s a new workout routine. It can help create a new discourse between individuals who you've never met. In a nutshell, Pinterest is basically a virtual world of ideas and creations.

[Image from Pinterest]