Debuting just two years ago, Pinterest has seen a massive surge of interest in recent months. Now, a new report indicates that it has blown past competitors like Tumblr and Google+ to become the third most popular social network, after Twitter and Facebook.

The meteoric success was reported by the marketing firm Experian’s 2012 Digital Marketer report, which noted the number three slot for the social network. While surprising, the social pinboard site has had incredible momentum behind it. CNet noted that the site had a 4,000% increase landing it amongst the top 10 social sites in December. Just this past February, Pinterest became the fastest site in history to break the 10 million unique views threshold, now estimated to pull in about 11.7 million views a month.

As a true measure of its success, the site has already spawned a slew of pornographic imitators. You know you’re doing something right when all the skin industry wants to copy your style.

Of course, the Experian report is not without caveats as the definitions of “popularity” and “social site” are nebulous online. However, being placed at the same level as Twitter and Facebook shows that Pinterest really has caught the public’s attention, though how the service will capitalize on this growth — or monetize it — remains unclear. One thing is certain: Now that a major marketing analytics firm has declared it a top-three social site, users should brace themselves for an even bigger push from marketers on the service.

(Venturebeat via Techmeme)

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