Pinterest is Now the No. 3 Social Network in the U.S. [STUDY]

 by Todd Wasserman

Pinterest is now the number three most-popular social network in the U.S., behind Facebook and Twitter, according to Experian Hitwise.

A new report from the researcher shows Pinterest got 21.5 million visits during the week ending Jan. 28, a nearly 30-fold increase over a comparable week in July. Not surprisingly, the site skews female with a 60/40 ration of women to men visitors.

Experian rep Matt Tatham says Pinterest beat its next-closest competitor, LinkedIn, in total visits in February. Tatham says the rankings by total visits for March is as follows:

• 1. Facebook: 7 billion
• 2. Twitter: 182 million
• 3. Pinterest: 104 million
• 4. LinkedIn: 86 million
• 5. Tagged: 72 million
• 6. Google+: 61 million
The report, which tracks visits rather than unique visitors, is based on web traffic and doesn’t factor in visits from mobile sites. According to Experian’s reckoning, Foursquare only got 2.9 million visits in March and Instagram got 10.2 million.
ComScore, which doesn’t measure mobile traffic either, but ranks sites by uniques rather than total visits, did not include Pinterest in its list of the top 50 web properties in February. However, LinkedIn made number 27 with 36 million visitors. ComScore listed Pinterest as its number three “top-gaining” properties, however, with 17.8 million total visitors that month. ComScore’s March figures were not available at press time.