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Buying a watch online: Pinterest and Instagram to the...
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Buying a watch online: Pinterest and Instagram to the rescue!

Wednesday, 29 May 2019
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Laurent Francois
Editor, RE-UP

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4 min read

Buying a watch takes patience and method. Browsing the web, cruising social media and reading opinions on forums are all part of the process. Fortunately, there are social media tools and features out there that can make a collector’s life a little easier. Here are just some.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a great way to create inspirational boards of images picked up from just about any website you might have visited. These can be public or private. You only need install a browser button or download the Pinterest app on your smartphone to save the image of a watch that caught your eye, be it on eBay, Netaporter.com, a blog or somewhere else. You can then save the thumbnail of the watch on one of your boards, add a caption and receive comments from other users.

Main advantage: collect the timepieces you are interested in as you find them, sort them into categories (even subcategories) and add your own notes. All your searches are centralised in one place, saving you considerable time.
Worth considering: create a group board (as well as solo boards). This is ideal when watch-hunting with other collectors, who can contribute new suggestions to the mix.
Plus factor: you can add pictures of watches spotted on Instagram.

Instagram

Instagram is hugely popular, but few watch fans make use of its “collections” feature. The principle is simple: whenever you find a picture of a watch you like, you can save it by clicking on the bookmark. If, however, instead of just briefly clicking you leave your finger on the bookmark symbol, a window will prompt you to select where you would like to save the image or the video: in an existing album or in a new one that you will create.

Main advantage: a simple way to save interesting information about a watch (such as a video showing the details of a mechanism) that only takes a couple of minutes.
Worth considering: instead of subscribing to users’ accounts, you can subscribe to hashtags. This is especially useful when running specific searches (e.g. #seamaster300) without having to follow thousands of accounts.
Minus factor: be aware that Instagram users tend to frequently delete images from their accounts, making them impossible to find again. As it stands, the Instagram collections feature is great for keeping track of watches you like but isn’t a 100% reliable archive.

Screengrabs and private blogs (on wordpress.com)

If you want to be sure an image is archived even if a website or a user decides to get rid of it, the simplest solution is to take a screengrab. Usually, they are automatically saved from your smartphone to Google Photos or the iCloud. We suggest you regularly make the effort to organise them into albums (this will save you time later).
Another option that’s popular among collectors is to update their private blog on wordpress.com. These are free and can only be accessed by their owner. This method lets you publish notes on a search with associated images while benefiting from all the resources of a blog (links, categories per brands, specs, year, etc.).

Main advantage: the ability to store not only images and videos but also quotes/opinions gleaned on forums.
Worth considering: back-publish articles by the watch’s release year and benefit from the WordPress archives feature.
Plus factor: the geekiest among us will find multiple automation features at IFTT.com.

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