Instagram made photo filters famous, but ecommerce startup Keep is using a different kind of filter to build a business out of the the images that fashionable women share via their Instagram accounts.
Keep, which is tailored toward young women in their 20s and 30s, has generated a list of more than 100 of Instagram's most fashionable users. It then helps customers find and purchase the items that these women include in their photos.
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Handbags, makeup, jewelry, shoes — it's all fair game to Keep, which has an entire page on its website devoted to users who wish to "Shop Instagram." Once an item is identified from Keep's filtered list of Instagram fashionistas, it will upload the photo to its site, and include a link to where shoppers can find the item online. The result: a shoppable version of Instagram.
"Instagram is where all the fashionable young women are spending their mornings," said Keep cofounder and president MaryAnn Bekkedahl, who noted Instagram's popularity among fashion bloggers and at live-fashion events. "It's kind of where all the young, sexy girls are. So we said, 'Hey, what can we do here?'"

Image: Keep.com

Keep operates somewhat like Pinterest in that users who come across an item they love while surfing the web can easily "keep" (i.e. save) it within their profile on the social site. Other users can then find out where to buy the item based on the link included in a post. Simply put, it's like a Pinterest for ecommerce, but only for products, according to cofounder and CEO Scott Kurnit.
The "as seen on Instagram" portion of Keep is just one element of the website, but a popular one nonetheless. The toughest challenge in making Instagram shoppable is often finding the items and clothing that appear in its images. "Most of the Instagram posts do not come with any clues," Bekkedahl said.
This is where Keep's employees — many of whom are "active shoppers" — come in, Bekkedahl said. There is one specific employee who runs the Instagram page within Keep, but many staffers will help identify clothing, bags and jewelry when necessary. If a specific product cannot be identified — sometimes celebrities have custom-made products — Keep will send shoppers to a lookalike product.
This doesn't happen often, though, according to Bekkedahl. One recent product that left Keep employees stumped: a blue dress worn by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer during CES a few weeks ago.

This blue dress worn by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer at CES (with Katie Couric) is one of the few items Keep couldn't find online.
Image: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Keep is taking what Kurnit calls the "YouTube approach" when it comes to using photos from Instagram; that means Keep is using them without asking, but will take them down if a user complains. (Instagram's terms of use stipulate that content is owned by the person who posts it, but Kurnit, who also founded About.com, still jokes that he's "waiting for the call from Mark Zuckerberg.")
However, the issue doesn't seem to be a concern for Keep. The startup routinely has Instagram users begging for their posts to be included in the site's "as seen on Instagram" section. But what if Instagram rolls out its own shopping option within the app (which Keep's founders believe will happen someday)? "'As Seen on Instagram' is just a piece of what we do," Bekkedahl said.
Instagram did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The remaining items on Keep are selected by users, which offers an automatic endorsement for the products, and makes the site feel more natural to shoppers, according to Kurnit. The list of items is random, and replicates the experience of browsing through your favorite department store. "Watch women walk around Bloomingdale's or Saks," he explained. "They are not there to say I specifically need a little black cocktail dress for Saturday night ... Women shop for hobby."
Keep launched in late 2012 as part of Keep Holdings, a consumer-tech company that operates another brand, Swizzle, which helps users manage their email inboxes. Keep has raised $43 million in funding since 2010. Kurnit said the company does not release user metrics, but added that "hundreds of thousands" of users are "keeping" items.
Like many social networks, Keep is focused on attracting users, and hasn't yet hit the monetization switch. When it chooses to do so, an obvious model would be to take a small percentage of revenues from Keep referrals. Another would be to offer promoted products or accounts, much like how users can on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.
Whatever the company chooses, Kurnit said he has high hopes for Keep. "If we keep executing as we are, the average women is going to say, 'I need Amazon and I need Keep.'"
No filters necessary.
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