One of the social networks quietly (or not so quietly) on the rise is Pinterest. It's a sharing space that needs to be on any forward-thinking brand's radar (a point that DIG teammate @juliacantor eloquently makes here).

Here's the catch. For most anyone who has been on Pinterest, most feeds are full of cats, recipes and what looks like cut-outs from an IKEA or Etsy catalog. It's all quality stuff...and it reflects the nature of the current demographic that uses Pinterest the most. My wife is addicted to it, as are some of my Engauge co-workers - particularly all the female ones.

A few of us Engaugers were having a conversation about Pinterest on the elevator recently and discussed the lack of male participation on the site, trying to figure out why that is. @leesnewton immediately asked "is there anything masculine on Pinterest?"

Boom. The million dollar question. Many guys had signed up for Pinterest but most of their default Facebook or Twitter contacts really leveraging the space were their female counterparts. There are some awesome things being pinned and shared by guys but much of it skewed the other direction. As we brought it up on our elevator conversation, @juliacantor challenged us: "if you want more guys to take interest into Pinterest, why don't you all start pinning things that guys would like"

Accepting a Challenge...and Starting the Revolution

I took her words to heart and started a board dedicated to all things masculine. An hour later "The Board of Man" was born onPinterest, with several contributors. Sure, I probably swung the pendulum towards the other extreme, going completely overboard with men punching sharks, explosions and pictures of Clint Eastwood.

However, it's a step in a direction. Eventually, the playing field will level out and more guys will get involved on the site, pinning things they like. I just created "The Board of Man" as an extreme launching point. We now have multiple contributors to the board posting some awesome (and funny) stuff that reflects all things man.

Want to Join the Movement?

If you want to contribute to the "Board of Man," drop a comment below and find me on Pinterest here. It's a good place for any guys who haven't started trying out the service to get their feet wet.

However, if you really want to spread the movement, create your own guy-friendly boards. You could have sports, comic book heroes, adventure shots or anything else of the sort that isn't a recipe or snazzy photo of throw pillows. Ping me if you do, I'd love to follow those boards and even out my stream.

It's an experiment for now. I'll definitely post a follow-up here in a few weeks to see how many guys we can get on board with Pinterest and see how the content stream looks like from there. It could shake up my own stream or fail miserably as an experiment. But that's what experiments are for.