Pinterest drives almost as much traffic as Twitter, Google

The image-based social network Pinterest has been around for a couple of years but it's only in the last couple of months that interest in the virtual pinboard social network has soared.

In December, 2011, Hitwise listed Pinterest as one of the Web's Top 10 and Time listed it in its Top 5 social networks of 2011. comScore reports that as of November, 2011, Pinterest had almost 5 million users.

New statistics, recently released by social sharing tools firm Shareaholic, reveal that Pinterest is pushing up the rankings to drive almost as much referral traffic (3.6%) as Twitter (3.61%) and Google (3.62%).

In fact, Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than YouTube (1.05%), Reddit (0.83%) and Google+ (0.22%).

The successful use of Pinterest by business will depend on many factors including whether the product or service offered "fits" with the visual aspect of the social network. Other than that, the possibilities of Pinterest use are limited only by the imagination.
Contests, promotions, new product development, consumer feedback, recruitment or brand awareness can all be developed using Pinterest, and more besides.

Success stories are already peppering the press including the 1million/month page views being achieved by 3-month old luxury lifestyle search engine LuxeFinds.com and the 10 million page views crafter Kate of The Small Things blog received.

Shareaholic's referral traffic data is based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month.

Tags: Pinterest, social marketing, social network, tagging, trends, web traffic