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Pinterest Innovations
Several additional innovations by Pinterest in the last two years are PinSage, augmented controls to reduce self-harm and the latest Try on feature.
PinSage
- In 2018, Pinterest and Stamford University collaborated in launching the social media channel's PinSage framework, a deep learning-based tool that provided "advanced recommendation" capabilities for Pinterest's ad and shopping functions.
- This artificial intelligence and machine learning tool leverages a graph convolutional network (GCN) to "learn" new information about pins using web-scale graphs.
- Specifically, the developers at Pinterest and Stamford leveraged NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and the cuDNN-accelerated TensorFlow deep learning framework to train their GCN on over 18 terabytes of data with 3 billion nodes for Pinterest's pins and boards.
- According to Nvidia, this new artificial intelligence tool has the potential to "supercharge" product discovery and future shopping at Pinterest.
- Additionally, The Wall Street Journal touts this innovation as helping to encourage more users to purchase products through the site, as well potentially supporting the expansion of Pinterest's user base.
Augmented Controls to Reduce Self-Harm
- More recently, in 2019, Pinterest revealed that it is using artificial intelligence to reduce self-harm content on the site.
- Announced in conjunction with World Health Day, the social media company shared that it had introduced more "robust AI too;s" which provided Pinterest with an enhanced ability to "identify, remove and avoid" pathways to content that might "display, rationalize or encourage self-injury."
- Not only do these new "augmented controls" identify potentially harmful content, but they incorporate "more sophisticated referrals," whereby Pinterest users that search for key phrases or imagery are automatically redirected to relevant support services.
- Overall, these efforts enabled Pinterest to reduce self-harm posts on the site by 88% since 2018, meaningfully improving the health and well-being of the Pinterest community.
- Additionally, according to Fortune, this innovation enabled Pinterest to show significant progress in a space where other social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have stumbled in the past, potentially giving the social media channel a new competitive advantage.
Try On Feature
- Most recently, Pinterest also introduced its latest innovation of a new Try on feature.
- According to the social media company, Try on uses augmented reality to enable its users to virtually "try on" products that they find on Pinterest.
- Specifically, this feature expands on the slightly older Pinterest Lens tool by integrating a user's mobile phone camera to create an immersive shopping experience for Pinterest customers.
- Currently, the feature is available for US users only, and enables those with the Pinterest mobile app to sample different lipsticks visually from brands including Sephora, Estee Lauder and Urban Decay.
- Going forward, the company is also planning on expanding the feature to users worldwide as well as to a greater array of products.
- Meanwhile, this new feature not only adds new interest for Pinterest users, but it may enhance sales through the social media channel after Pinterest customers engage with the augmented reality experience.
Research Strategy
Several slightly older but still noteworthy innovations from Pinterest are the company's introduction of Pin2Vec in 2017 and Pinterest Lens in 2017.