If you are not familiar with Pinterest, it’s one of the fastest growing social networks, adding 10 million members in the last nine months. The company is currently valued at $200 million. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard, where you can post and share content you find on the web that you like onto a board of your own.

This week in connected, five things you need to know about Pinterest:

1. In order to join Pinterest, you need an invite. It’s for members only. You can request an invite from the company on their site. Ten million people have received and signed in with invites. TechCrunch estimates that over 90% of the people using Pinterest are women. It seems especially opportune for female targeted stations, since the majority of the user-base on Pinterest is female.

2. People are using Pinterest to create virtual pinboards where they can share ideas on redecorating their homes, planning weddings, style or clothing, and inspiration. Pinterest says that its mission is “to connect everyone in the world through the ’things’ they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people.”

3. A report from Shareaholic suggests that Pinterest drives more referral traffic to online retailers than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined. Facebook drives about 9x the referral traffic that Pinterest does, but they have a drastically larger user base. Consider building a Pinterest board for each morning show bit or type of content featured on your station, and use Pinterest to drive traffic back to your station or show web site.

4. People are finding all sorts of creative uses for Pinterest—even finding jobs. Mashable published an article this weekend about using Pinterest to create a resume.

5. Besides the fact that Pinterest drives a nice amount of traffic to online retailers, it may also be popular because it is a simple way to feature products in a social environment that targets people who are interested in goods (materialistic?). Some of the brands that have joined Pinterest include Whole Foods, Nordstrom and General Electric.

A handful of radio and TV stations have dabbled in Pinterest. Some have done extensive reports and “how to” segments about the service, like this TV station in Maine or this TV station in Denver.

Others are using it to communicate with listeners/viewers. iHeart Radio has a Pinterest page. Some radio stations like WMTX “Mix 100.7” in Tampa and Orlando’s WXXL “XL106.7” have also created Pinterest pages.

The most intriguing TV show using the site is NBC’s Today Show, which is posting information on style, food, recipes, health, travel, parenting, anchor antics (their personalities), pictures of people from the plaza each day, and other lifestyle oriented information.

Are you using it? If so, please share your innovative use of the Pinterest site, and we’ll share it with the rest of the connected family! E-mail me at connected@radio-info.com