Olapic Turns Social Media Pins Into Store Portals On Pinterest

Olapic, the social media aggregation and curation service for brands and stores, has launched a new service to turn images shared on platforms like Facebook or Instagram into store portals on Pinterest.

Using Olapic, brands can share linked photos on Pinterest that will bring a user back to a product page for the store, rather than the social media service from which the original image was shared.

The company does this by managing all of the steps associated with acquiring permission to re-use the content and then coding that content to link back to the store, instead of a site like Instagram or Facebook.

“Consumers today live in an omni-channel world in which they value authenticity over stylized stock imagery, and seek new ways to engage with brands across social channels,” said Pau Sabria, chief executive and co-Founder of Olapic, in a statement.

Olapic

It’s a way for brands and stores to match specific product stock keeping units to customer generated photos and place them on Pinterest, so that users of the site can directly access the product. The company is coupling the service with its algorithm to identify the most effective pictures on social media and control product links for each pin.

“We’ve been very much focused on collecting content and Pinterest makes content discoverable,” said Sabria.

Olapic began in 2010 and when the company launched, Sabria says he wasn’t fully aware that Pinterest existed. Unlike other social media management platforms, Sabria says Olapic engages with social media users to allow brands to access the images they post.

“The issue here is how do you automate that process for tens of thousands of pictures?” said Sabria. “How do you make it so that it’s on an ongoing basis? The picture targeting and curation are a fundamental aspect of the marketing strategy. We created the capability of bringing that user generated content into the marketing strategy of brands.”

There are 170 companies using Olapic now, and the company has 80 employees at offices in New York, Cordoba, Argentina, and London. The company has raised $6 million over three rounds, according to CrunchBase. Investors include Fung Capital USA, Longworth Venture Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Scout Ventures.