• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 15, 2012

Curalate will roll out a platform Tuesday that curates images on Pinterest and analyzes sharing behavior and the types of photos pinned on boards, similar to the way technology might evaluate text in a conversation. It gives brands insights into how people view products or services.

The tool introduces the ability to analyze sentiment by image, rather than text on a page. Developing the product meant working with more than 150 brands and agencies, such as Birchbox and FRWD, to build the tools that eventually could support other social sites, such as Twitter or Facebook. As a result of success during initial tests, investors NEA, First Round Capital and MentorTech seeded the startup with $750,000. 

The technology, which integrates into Google Analytics, analyzes daily interactions, identifies the biggest fans and products most pinned, compares one brand to another and helps identify products and pins sending the most traffic to branded Web sites. 

The integration with Google Analytics allows marketers to compare different parts of data, such as relating information on Pinterest to Web site traffic data.

Knowing answers to these questions could increase ecommerce sales simply by moving a product buried deep in the site to the home page. Then a short paragraph is added, detailing the back-story on the product's history to give consumers the chance to share the post on other social sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, directing Fans and Followers to the Web site or Pinterest.

When it comes to moms, Nielsen said nearly 5 million found their way to Pinterest in March. The appeal likely links to ecommerce services on Web sites.

Content on branded Web sites drive consumer to share on Pinterest. Curalate analyzed 17 million pins across 80 brands. The company found that 85% of brand engagement occurs because fans want to share the company's products from their Web site, rather than the Pinterest page.

"Brands adopt Pinterest but still operate under the assumption that engagement happens because of their Pinterest page," said Apu Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Curalate, Philadelphia. "It does, but a huge percentage happens because brand fans go to the company's Web site to search for products."

Gupta said there is no plan to aggregate data across a variety of brands and package up the data for sale, but rather gather information for specific brands. Brands can also use the data as a lead generation tool.

Since Nick Shiftan, Curalate co-founder, came from Microsoft with a background in mobile, it's a safe bet the company will focus next on smartphones and tablets.