Pinterest is social media’s rising star — and now has the traffic stats to prove it.

The two-year-old social bookmarking network is rapidly becoming the go-to web hangout of brides-to-be, fashionistas and aspiring chefs. The website has proven itself to be particularly popular among women, who account for 58% of Pinterest’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.

Pinterest’s traffic increased more than fourfold between September 2011 and December 2011, leaping up to 7.51 unique visitors in December alone. Additionally, the site now beats YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January, according to a Shareaholic study.

Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of referral traffic, while Twitter just barely edged ahead of the newcomer, accounting for 3.61% of referral traffic. In July 2011, Pinterest accounted for just 0.17% of referral traffic, proving the site’s blockbuster growth.

Facebook reigns king of referrals, accounting for more than one-quarter (26.4%) of traffic, 4.3% of which comes from Facebook Mobile. After Pinterest, Facebook is experiencing the most referral growth, gaining almost one percentage point in December.

Although Pinterest is becoming a significant source of traffic for retailers, search still dominates, and the site has yet to prove itself as a potential sales channel. At present, scant data is available about the social network’s conversion rates.

As more and more consumers user their smartphones for search, Google’s mobile search and display ads are growing like crazy

Firefox 10 — the latest in a dizzying series of upgrades — is now available for your browsing pleasure.

In Honor of the passing of Steve Jobs

Every search engine wants to be more relevant. However, what is relevant to you might not be relevant to someone else.

With more than 600,000 apps available for an estimated 350 million Apple and Android mobile devices, it’s not difficult to see how mobile app advertising could soon eclipse online display advertising.

Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple, he announced to the company’s board of directors.

Facebook Credits are hot. More and more businesses — both large and small — are exploring how they can incorporate Facebook Credits into their overall social strategy.

Many businesses embed YouTube videos on their sites, but visitors can click through the video to YouTube and off the brand’s site. Enter Vidyard, which is launching today as an affordable way for businesses to host videos that can be viewed either on a landing page or via an embeddable player.

Android now has a total of over 150 million activated devices worldwide.