• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 21, 2013

Social scrapbooking sensation Pinterest has secured $200 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion.

“There have been reports that the funding was coming, but now it is done, in a round led by Valiant Capital Management,” AllThingsD reports.

“Investors … were surely inspired by the site’s run-away 2012 growth and continued success,” CNet writes. “Pinterest, as measured by … ComScore, ended December at 29 million unique U.S. Web visitors for the month.”

“The San Francisco-based company has meanwhile zeroed in on translating its popularity into sales by developing services for businesses,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Remarkably, “Pinterest is now worth more than publicly traded Internet companies Zynga Inc., Yelp Inc. and Pandora Media Inc., even though it has yet to generate revenue,” Bloomberg notes.

“By signing up private-equity investors now, Pinterest boosts its prospects of eventually going public,” Business Insider writes. “Yet an IPO seems far off for Pinterest, which has no real financials to speak of.”

Best-case scenario, “Pinterest will likely derive revenues by collecting fees for traffic it send to web stores that result in sales,” The Next Web suggests. “Its platform is also well positioned to accept fees for product placement and other forms of advertising.”

In a statement, “Pinterest said it will use the new funding to develop new technology, continue hiring, expand its user base internationally, and make strategic investments,” GigaOm reports.