Happy fifth birthday, Pinterest. You aren't like the others.

If social media platforms were children, you'd be pretty proud to call Pinterest your own. At 5 years old this month, Pinterest shows markedly different characteristics to her peers. Just a few months younger, Instagram would be a self absorbed, selfie obsessed narcissist interested in showing the world the shape of her Lululemon clad bum cheeks after an hour in the gym and tagging herself at smart cafes, forgetting you are actually there to look at someone else, have a conversation and eat.

This week Periscope, a live-streaming app, was launched by it's adoptive father, Twitter. Now you can not only take photos of yourself and share them with the world but also stream banal, everyday events and invite people to watch you doing them and comment in real time, peppering the screen with hearts as you go.

Twitter would stand on a soap box, shouting into a megaphone to anyone who listening, barking in 140 character bursts, keen to expound their egotism as widely as possible.

All these platforms encourage narcissism: 'Look at me! See how thin/wildly happy/beautiful/rich I am!' We are bombarded by selfies. Kim Kardashian informed her mother last year she needed to take 1,200 selfies on holiday. They are off to look at, but even more odd when viewed from the perspective of actually watching someone take the picture. If Instagram were a person, she'd probably behave like this girl by the pool who spent a whole minus trying to perfect her pose, apparently to impress those who follow her Instagram but seemingly unaware of the impression she was making to those who were watching the scene.

Not Pinterest though. Although boards and Pins are available for others to see, the main use of Pinterest is to gather ideas, pictures and inspiration for personal use. Each Pin is available for everyone to use and collate on their boards. Other people can look at your board - there is the option to keep things private but the main focus of Pinterest isn't to show everyone what you do, it's to gather ideas for yourself.

Edutopia, a foundation dedicated to illumination and development of what works well in education have Pinterets boards in a huge range of subjects to enable teachers to share best practices and strategies.

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If Pinterest where a child, she'd be growing up handsomely: a creative, thoughtful person interested in bettering herself through learning and being interested in what happens around her, rather than touching the 'switch camera' button at the top of her smart phone. Happy fifth birthday.

Jenny Rudd spent 6 years as a trader in London before returning to New Zealand in 2007 making the transition from numbers to letters by heading up the content team at MOSH, New Zealand's leading social media agency.

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