Pinterest wants to help smartphone users shop easier by allowing them to snap photos of a product they want to be automatically searched online through their new "camera search" tool.
The new tool was announced by Pinterest on Tuesday and it is part of the company's attempt to be a unique brand compared to Facebook and Twitter. It will also help raise more awareness regarding their brand.
Pinterest said that they wanted to be known more for their semi-niche market of travel, crafts, cooking and shopping where the new tool is designed for. Ben Silbermann, Pinterest CEO, said on Tuesday that they want to bridge the gap between a person's inspiration and making that a part of their life.
The new Pinterest app will also have other features such as buttons and pins that would make digital shopping easier. Pinterest is highlighting their new object-detection software which allows users to search for a product that they have snapped a photo of, the New York Times has learned.
It is not the first time that such a feature has been highlighted. Amazon also has a similar technology that allows their customers to snap a photo of a product and to see whether they have it on their online stores.
Pinterest will be slowly rolling out the "Camera search" feature in the following months after further testing and tweaks, Forbes reported. They will also implement the "visual search" button that would allow users to search using images instead of text.
The company claims that there are more than 130 million visual searches made on Pinterest each month. Pinterest also said that there are over 10 million products that can be bought even without leaving the app or website itself thanks to their 20,000 partner retailers which they still expect to grow in number.
Silbermann said that they wanted Pinterest to help a user maintain their personalized catalog of items and inspirations which are curated by the community themselves. Ideas are one of the highlights of Pinterest as people look to the site to search for them when it comes to artsy crafts, home projects and even kitchen recipes.