Online pinboard Pinterest, the hot new startup that’s growing at a phenomenal rate, won the Crunchie for the Best New Startup of 2011 at this year’s Crunchies. (This, despite the fact that it actually launched in 2010). The reason? Crazy, crazy traffic and growth. In November, the site had reportedly seen a 2,000% increase in pageviews, according to comScore. That wasn’t year-over-year growth, mind you, but the increase Pinterest had seen since June. At 421 million pageviews, the site had already surpassed more established players, like Etsy, for example.

But co-founder Ben Silbermann stayed tight-lipped on the hard metrics behind Pinterest. In an interview backstage after the win, he declined to provide the number of users or even the number of pins. (There were “a lot,” he demurred.)

However, Silbermann did attribute Pinterest’s success, in part, to its design and ability to connect people with each other.

“Pinterest is a visual site, and a lot of people are visual by nature,” he explains. “But at its core, Pinterest is a site that connects people who are passionate about the same things. In the same way that people who use Facebook are excited to connect with people they care about, people on Pinterest are excited to be inspired by people with similar tastes.”

(For what it’s worth, I still think Pinterest could have easily won Best Timesink, too, had it made the cut!)

Crunchbase

• PINTEREST

Company: Pinterest

Website: pinterest.com

Launch Date: 2008

Funding: $138M

Pinterest is a social networking site with a visually-pleasing “virtual pinboard” interface. Users collect photos and link to products they love, creating their own pinboards and following the pinboards of other people whom they find interesting. The site is currently invite-only, and it has experienced rapid growth in recent months.

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