Google quietly unveils Pinterest rival ‘Keen’ that curates content using the company’s machine-learning
- Keen is a Pinterest rival that uses Google’s machine-learning to curate content
- Users create topics and Google uses data troves to suggests content
- Those pages can be shared with other users and followed
- It’s currently available on the web and Android devices
Google’s experimental apps and services division has introduced a Pinterest rival called Keen that that uses its machine-learning algorithm to curate content.
The service, which was quietly introduced this week, is available on the web and Android and is meant to be an alternative to the infinite scrolling associated with other types of web and social media browsing.
‘On Keen, which is a web and Android app, you say what you want to spend more time on, and then curate content from the web and people you trust to help make that happen,’ said co-founder of Keen CJ Adams in a blog post.
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Keen (pictured) is a social network from Google that curates content using its machine-learning algorithm and troves of data
‘You make a ‘keen,’ which can be about any topic, whether it’s baking delicious bread at home, getting into birding or researching typography. Keen lets you curate the content you love, share your collection with others and find new content based on what you have saved.’
While the idea of Keen isn’t particularly novel, it does employ Google’s machine learning, which could give it an advantage over analogous platforms like Pinterest.
According to Adams, once someone creates a ‘keen, the service uses Google search to seek out related content and helps suggest content to expand the page.
For every keen you create, we use Google Search and the latest in machine learning to remain on the lookout for helpful content related to your interests,’ Adams writes.
‘The more you save to a keen and organize it, the better the recommendations become.’
Alternatively to creating and populating your own keen, Adams says users can follow keens that others have created, and receive updates when new items are added.
For Google, Keen represents another avenue to gain insight on users. As noted by The Verge, the platform seems to be linking Google accounts and the mounds of data it already collects to curate topics for users.
Whether Keen will be able to court a user base, however, is still a major question. Google has a spotty track record when it comes to social media with forays like Shoelace, Google+ and more than a dozen others all failing due to lack of interest.
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