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.

For the first time, Facebook has revealed details about how it tracks users across the web.

Tweet

/*By Ed Bott
Summary: A Google software engineer who accidentally broadcast a 4,578-word rant about the company’s failings saved his toughest criticism for the Google+ service. A list of features can’t make up for a complete lack of vision and a company where “not getting it” is endemic.
Something has been bothering me [...]

Facebook’s blockbuster announcements last week have already gotten marketers to rethink how they will use the platform, but what about their brand pages?

Tumblr is a force of nature in the Internet ecosystem that cannot be ignored. That massive audience means opportunities for businesses to find fans and build brands.

Twitter, which just got into the advertising business last year, will start selling political ads this week.

The cat is out of the bag that Facebook will introduce new buttons on the wall that will begin introducing some granularity to the “Like” concept.

Tweet

/*Google+ at least did what Buzz and Orkut could not. It got off to an impressive start, made quite a bit of noise, and made Facebook look over its shoulder to see if this latest pursuer is legit. It achieved 25 million users in no time. But people started realizing that the biggest thing missing [...]

Twitter is gifting its Promoted Tweets advertisers with wider distribution across the network, meaning you will start to see Promoted Tweets from brands you don’t follow starting Tuesday.

Google +1 buttons are becoming more ubiquitous thanks to an update that carries them over to the mobile web.