If you've gotten the hang of pinning to Pinterest, this year's hottest social site, you may be looking for ways to enhance your pins.
It's no surprise that with Pinterest's explosive popularity, developers are scrambling to create add-ons. But there are also tools inside Pinterest itself that you may not have discovered yet.
First, here are two of our favorite add-ons:
1. Pin a Quote
While pins are generally photos from around the Web — mint jeans, coral bags and pink-dipped hair are popular — pithy quotes have gained a foothold as well. Not many quotes come in the form of images, so you'll need a way to transform words into images.
Try Pin a Quote, a browser plugin that works with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. Once it's installed, you can highlight a bit of text on a website, click the "Pin a Quote" button in your browser bookmark bar and instantly get the words printed in black on white as a .jpg image file. Want something fancier? Pin a Quote Pro for $2 offers a variety of fonts and color palettes. Either way, you can pin your quote right to Pinterest.
2. SpinPicks
Dying to pin, but can't find a Pinterest-worthy photo? Try SpinPicks, a new website that has a roulette-ish feel to it. The site pulls a random photo from a site of your choosing: Flickr (Creative Commons copyright-only, so no licensing issues involved), Instagram , Twitpic, Reddit/Rpics, YouTube (trending videos) and PicPlz. Or choose to search Pinterest itself. You can "spin" from several categories, including Popular Pins, Newest Pins and by topic (architecture, women's apparel, photography, etc.) Once you see something you like, you can pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest. SpinPicks is in its early stage, so you'll have to register to try it out. Just confirm your email and you can start spinning.
And here are tools within Pinterest that you may not have found.
3. Collaborate with pinners
You don't have to go it alone on Pinterest — invite friends to add to your boards. Here's how: go to one of your boards and click the "Edit" button in the top-right corner. Change the setting from "Just Me" to "Me + Contributors." You must follow at least one board belonging to another Pinterest user to add that person as a contributor.
4. Sell products
Sell your stuff on Pinterest by adding a price with the dollar sign to the description of your pin. (Each pin contains a link to the source of the photo.) Sometimes you might want to add a price to just let other pinners know what an item costs. The "$" symbol prompts Pinterest to add the pin to its gifts section. But use this feature carefully — it has been linked to spammers , which could quickly tarnish your reputation on Pinterest.
5. Mentions
Like with Twitter, you can "mention" a fellow Pinterest user in a pin's description or in a comment. Just add the @ symbol before the person's username. This only works if you're already following a board belonging to the person you want to mention.