Google is taking on Pinterest after quietly launching Keen, an experiment from Area 120 and PAIR at Google, that allows you to “share your passions” with the community.
With Keen, users can curate special “Keens” (comparable to Pinterest “Boards”) based on their specific interests and hobbies. For example, if a user likes yoga, when making a yoga-themed Keen, Google will auto-populate the Keen with relevant content related to yoga.
The big difference between Keen and Pinterest? Artificial Intelligence.
Keen works entirely through Google’s AI and search engine technology. Keen leverages the Google Search index and user feedback to provide personalized recommendations that improve over time and aim to expand the user’s interests.
When you make a Pinterest Board, you either manually select the items you’d like in it, or you are shown a feed of Pins that were not curated with you specifically in mind. With a Keen, the site will ask you for search prompts that it can use to bring you content, and it also auto-populates prompts of its own.
“Technology struggles with understanding what we want to spend our time on,” Keen’s website states. “Keen was built to give users control over their recommendations.”
Keen touts three main features: curate and share, expand and explore, and spend time on what you love.
Curate and share.
You can curate Keen for yourself or for others. For example, you can use Keen “to build a collection of your best resources on a topic you know well and share it with people who would enjoy your curation.” Keens can be private or public- you’re in control of who can contribute and what is shared.
Expand and explore.
Every keen created is informed by Google search and machine learning to remain current and continuously find content related to your keen interest. Adding to the keen and organizing it improves the recommendations that you receive. “Even if you’re not an expert on a topic, you can start curating a keen and save a few interesting “gems” or links that you find helpful. These bits of content act like seeds and help keen discover more and more related content over time,” says Keen Co-founder CJ Adams. Like Pinterest, you can also follow other keens that users have created to further discover information and content on your interest.
Spend time on what you love.
Unlike Pinterest, which can suck users in for hours, Adams says “Keen isn’t intended to be a place to spend endless hours browsing.” “Instead,” he continues, “ it’s a home for your interests: a place to grow them, share them with loved ones and find things that will help in making this precious life count.”
Check out the below video to get the full snapshot of what Keen entails, and give it a try!
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