SAN FRANCISCO—Pinterest unveiled a new feature Tuesday that allows users of the visual scrapbooking service to take a photo of an object and find the object, or similar objects, within the app — for what Pinterest President Tim Kendall calls those "magical moments of inspiration."
Kendall said these are moments like seeing someone wearing a shirt you like at a bar or, personally for him, when he saw a stroller he loved for his two children this past weekend.
The San Francisco-based company will launch the camera feature, which should ultimately help users buy products linked to the service, in the coming months.
Pinterest has also made its visual search tool automatic. Since November, users have been able to use the tool to highlight different objects in a picture to find similar objects on Pinterest, such as a specific lamp or pillow in a picture of a living room. Now, iOS users will see dots on different objects in a picture, showing the user she can click on that dot to find objects like it on Pinterest.
Capitalizing on Pinterest's shopping aspect, users will be able to access the Pinterest shop on the desktop version, a feature that was only available on Android and iOS. Pinterest said 80% of users shop on the mobile application but 84% of those users said that they switch between their phone and their laptop.
Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends Report stated that 55% of users use Pinterest to shop as opposed to around 12% of users for social networks.
Pinterest also announced that beginning Tuesday, Pinterest is ridding itself of the "Buy It" button and created "Add to Bag" so users can buy more than one item at one time and will have a shopping bag across all their platforms. The shopping bag tells users the shipping deals that are available to them from that retailer. The feature is available on Android and desktop and will be coming out on iOS in the coming weeks.
Kendall saidadvertisers are able to target their exact audience through using Pinterest's databases, choosing which of the 2 billion search queries they want to show up in.
The result: Pinterest users are five times more likely to buy products in stores after seeing a promoted pin than with other online advertising.
Advertising is the only way that Pinterest generates revenue. The privately held company, with an estimated $11 billion valuation, did not comment on potential plans to go public.
