Google's incubator for experimental apps has recently launched an AI-powered app called Keen and it seems that it might give some tough time to Pinterest's in the future. According to co-founder CJ Adams, it serves as an alternative to mindless browsing on social media feeds.
In a blogpost, Adam said that you can curate content on any topic be it baking bread, birding, typography, or anything you have in mind. You can also share your collection with other people on the app and discover new content related to what you've saved. Sounds a lot like Pinterest? It is quite similar, however, Keen will be backed by Google's machine learning capabilities to curate content related to the user's interest.
Though this might not something new because almost even other social media app is working on personalizing its content to what users want to see. And Pinterest has already tapped into the hobby-related content with its pinboard-style layout, something Keen appears to mimic.
The real question is, what does Google get out of this? Since it has not really had much luck in the social media space, an app that gathers useful user data for targeting ads for the company makes sense. The data gathered from Keen could help Google know more about users' interests. The data from the app would likely be combined with everything else Google is already aware of its users.
We have to wait and see how much of a success this new app is, but it is great to see Google using machine learning to cater to what users care about and are interested in rather than just presenting them with content for more engagement without keeping their preferences in mind.
