While most new websites usually first launch their site, then try to ramp up their social media audience, Preen.me took the totally opposite approach.

It all started with a simple Facebook page, called Beauty Addicts, launched in November of 2011, where users could upload and share makeup looks, hairstyles and manicures. It quickly gained viral traction, attracting over one million beauty-minded friends, and paved the way for Preen.me—a social media platform that went live in 2012 and already gets one million hits per month, and, even more impressively, has a reach of over 60 million when you combine their Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ communities.”Our purest play is social media. We started on Facebook and grew from there. We’re not just about getting people to come to our website, but more about distributing our content through social media for the largest reach,” said Danya Klein, VP Brand Relations.

Hundreds of users upload new looks each day to Preen.me, from which a team of six full-time curators choose the 70 best looks to publish and promote on the website and social media channels. “Our users love to create new looks, how-to tutorials and video content, then share it. We don’t pay anyone to contribute to the site. It is all authentic peer-to-peer engagement,” explains Klein. When a user uploads a look, she tags all the products used to create it, which links them to a purchase page. “Right now we’re focusing on audience and engagement to optimize affiliate partners, like Amazon, and eventually have e-commerce. Next year, we’re hoping to take a large chunk of the digital marketing spend of beauty companies,” said Danya.

What they offer beauty marketers: social sampling, the chance to put new products into the hands of beauty-obsessed users who’ll not only be thrilled to receive and try the new product, but to share it on their social media channels and get meaningful viral traction. For example, Preen.me recently partnered with Lancome to distribute samples of their new 24H Artliner, along with some eyeshadows and mascara, to Preen.me’s top 50 users. The ROI: 80 published looks (yes, users voluntarily created more than one look), 130,000 social interactions and total reach of 5 million. Contests and social media promotion of new product launches and campaigns are also on the table. On average, a Preen.me post on Facebook receives almost 4,000 likes, nearly 400 shares and 
reaches over 150,000 people.

To date, Preen.me has raised $1.2 million of seed funding mainly from Genesis Partners, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures and Oren Zeev and is currently not in a fund-raising phase. The company was founded by Tamar Yaniv, who’s had various executive roles in the digital gaming industry, and Haggai Klorman, who has developed executive teams at start-ups, as well as managed vertical teams in established companies. Preen.me has a total of 19 employees and is based in Tel-Aviv, Israel, but 81% of engagement Preen receives is from the United States.