“The Campfire Sessions are an on-going, multi-discipline mashup lunchtime learning session at the Engine HQ Arena. They are a blazing good time.”

In the latest installment of Jam ‘Campfire’ sessions we asked Jammers, “Are you a Pinner?”

With a year of hype under its belt and a massive increase in popularity (420% visitor growth in the UK over the last 6 months), we wanted to know if Pinterest, the mood-boarding social networking site, was actually catching on with our very own social enthusiasts. The results were mixed.

We’d all heard of Pinterest and our clients were keen to learn more, but not many of us actively ‘pinned’. Even fewer had an idea of how we’d use the service for our clients. And even fewer still knew why this site became popular in the first place. One thing was for certain, based on the stats, we should be doing something about it - according to Econsultancy, Pinterest is driving more sales than Facebook. It accounts for 3.6% of referral traffic (Twitter is 3.61%) and it is second only to Facebook in terms of time spent by users per month.

The art of ‘scrapbooking’ has stemmed from a long history we are familiar with; social collaboration. So with fuel (we brought our lunches) and motivational research we started to tackle the ultimate challenge – what can Pinterest do for brands? We did some real-world pinning for each of our clients and started discussing what the future might look like if consumers were to create a brand’s image. It was a scary, but interesting thought.

We were also curious about what this trend means to Facebook. As you can recall, the entrance of Twitter into house-hold jargon brought ‘status updates’ to Facebook. Some Jammers even stated that Facebook photos are looking a little ‘Instagrammy’. Some speculated that Pinterest might get sold to the giant, but the majority of us think that Facebook will most likely adopt some sort of ‘pin-board’ for your profile page. Only the future will tell. We’ve got our eye on it.

Tara Davanzati is a Senior Analyst at Jam.