Pinterest is already fourth largest social network

Pinterest may have already become the fourth largest social network in the United States despite being less than two years old. Data from both Alexa, a web statistics firm, and DoubleClick Ad Planner suggests it has.

Alexa ranks Pinterest as the 16th most-visited website in the United States, with only three social networks – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – scoring higher. Alexa also reports that 47.9% of traffic to Pinterest comes from the United States.

DoubleClick Ad Planner tells a similar story. For the United States alone, DCAP estimates that Pinterest received 26 million unique visitors in February 2012. Compare this to Facebook’s 210 million, Twitter’s 37 million and LinkedIn’s 37 million also.

It’s not possible to get traffic data on Google+ using the above methods, but it’s estimated to be around 20 million monthly uniques.

DCAP also suggests that Pinterest doubled its traffic between January and February of this year, undoubtedly spurred on by the relentless media coverage the service is getting (including this post). Unsurprisingly, 81% of Pinterest’s visitors are female and sites also visited include chef-in-training.com, sixsisterstuff.com and foodgawker.com.

I don’t use Pinterest nor do I particularly understand the hype – but then again I said the same thing about Twitter before joining in 2008.