Pinterest is seeking to raise a new round of funding which would increase the company’s value to $2.5bn compared to its current worth of $1.5bn.

During 2012, the site’s number of global visits reached 48 million.

The firm operates a free photo-sharing website allowing users to pin and repin images of entities of interest, which are then themed in a grid.

Pinterest chief executive Ben Silbermann told the Wall Street Journal that the company is now studying a potential advertising model.

"A lot of last year was keeping up with growth [and] the big change with touch-screen devices. We’re building foundations to monetise," Silbermann said.

Currently employing 100, the scrapbooking firm was valued at $1.5bn upon raising money as part of financing round in May 2012 that generated $100m.

Since October 2012, the firm developed a team to interact daily with firms, while the following month it rolled out business accounts that enable firms to use their corporate name on their pinboard and to verify that they link to an official corporate website.

Pinterest has also been planning to introduce new data-analytics tools that allow firms to tracktheir Pinterest traffic and find users who interact based on their content.