The new application of Big G. is preparing to invade the land of Pinterest: Keen is able to find, save and catalog all kinds of web content
Pinterest is one of the most long-lived social networks on the web: thanks to a loyal niche of fans has managed to survive several successful platforms, from Facebook to TikTok, passing through Instagram. The reason? It was born to satisfy a precise need and especially for the needs of a particular group of users, those who need to save and catalog web content.
Now Google wants to challenge the channel with a very similar project. The platform was created by Area 120, the section of Google dedicated to experimental projects. CJ Adams, creator of the service says that everything was born when one evening, he and his wife, found themselves looking for information and content related to their passions, birdwatching and floriculture and save them to share them in a single space. That’s how they came up with the idea of creating Keen, a storage and sharing platform that works much like Pinterest.
How Keen Works
The platform was born thanks to CJ Adams and 3 other colleagues from Google’s Area 120. The collaboration of another group at the company called People + AI Research (PAIR), which leverages artificial intelligence to improve services based on learning from human choices, was key to creating the platform. For the moment, the app is only available on Google Play and the web, but there is speculation that an iOS version will soon be available. With this idea, Google wants to try to occupy again the market of social networks, after other similar experiments (some with short life) as Google+, Wave or Orkut.
How does Keen work?
To try the application for Android, just download it from Google Play. You can continue with your Google account or create a new one. Once you sign in, you’ll get a screen that shows you various contents: from articles to tweets, photographs, videos and any material you can find on the net. You can also save places and locations: for example restaurants according to the city or according to the menu they prepare.
Logging in to a bulletin board will allow you to take content to add it to your own or follow the profile to stay updated. Tapping on a user’s name will allow you to view their folders (assuming the account is not private). To create your own keen, just tap the plus sign (+) at the top of the main screen. At this point you’ll be able to give it a title and start filling it with relevant content. Google will suggest content based on the keywords in the title or those chosen between the tags, but the user can also add other items found in Explore.
This way, the app will be a safe harbor when looking for specific material based on your interests, passions, hobbies or needs of the moment. The keen can be private or public and can be shared, which is why the channel is a great solution when collaborating or working together on a project.
Among other interesting features of Keen is the ability to save content by tapping on the gem: these are interesting links that allow the system to offer similar content to the user. In fact, thanks to artificial intelligence, Keen is able to propose materials that are increasingly relevant to the tastes and needs of the individual user. Just like Google search, the platform therefore aims to offer a personalized service and above all updated according to the latest content published on the web.