Do you ‘pin’?  If you don’t know what that is, then you probably haven’t used Pinterest.  Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of Pinterest, you will.  It’s the latest social media rage.  However, unlike previous pretenders (e.g. Google Wave),  this one is worth the attention.

Pinterest is about viewing, sharing, and organizing images or videos of anything that’s of interest to you.  If you find something you like, whether it be a photograph of Abraham Lincoln or a dress from a Paris runway, you can ‘pin’ it.  Collections of pins are grouped into ‘boards’, which are usually built around a common theme (e.g. books you like, design ideas for your kitchen remodel, favorite quotes, etc.).  You can follow other boards and re-pin items (e.g. akin to the Facebook Like).

Pinterest usage has skyrocketed, in large part, because it’s incredibly easy to pin things and create boards.  Also, the visual nature of Pinterest makes the browsing experience very rich and fun.  The beauty of the website and related apps is how the technology gets out of the way of the star attraction – the photos themselves (videos too, but they aren’t nearly as popular).

So, how popular is Pinterest?  According to comScore, Inc., almost 8 million unique visitors flocked to Pinterest in December 2011 – that’s up from 418,000 in May 2011.   According to Shareaholic, Pinterest grew from 2.5% of referral traffic in December 2011 to 3.6% of the referrals in January 2012.  Especially impressive is that their share was only .17% in July 2011.  Hitwise reports that Pinterest is now the fifth most popular social networking site, ahead of Google+ and LinkedIn.

In my next blog post, I will discuss how marketers can leverage Pinterest but until then spend some time pinning.  You will find it, um, pinteresting!  Oh, and if you need a Pinterest invite (at the time of this post, you need an invite to join), just send me an email at tim at shaydigital.com with ‘pinterest’ in the subject line.