Google’s Area 120 team, their internal incubator responsible for developing experimental apps and services, quietly launched Keen – a would-be rival to Pinterest. Keen was developed taking full leverage of the search giant’s machine learning capabilities and launched as an alternative to mindless browsing.
Keen is an amalgamation of machine learning techniques and human collaboration to help users curate content around a topic of their interest. Every individual has their area of interest and hence the name ‘Keen’ not to be confused with any Irish footballer or English music band.
Unlike Pinterest, where users are allowed to share and discover new interests by pinning posts on their own and other’s boards, Google’s prowess in the fields of AI and interfaces makes Keen very slick, smooth, and efficient to use the app.
Also, at present, Pinterest seems to be completely taken over by fashion and interior designers and food bloggers, whereas Keen offers to display and collate content based purely on your interests. The team behind Keen go onto suggest that you will be provided with better recommendations as you continue to save and organize your personalized boards or ‘Keens’.
So, what exactly does it do?
The home page of Keen looks like a magazine and feels more like a collection of your ideas than a checklist. The idea behind the app is to inspire you than to provide you with a full-fledged plan. Each Keen comes with an Explore, Saved, and Searches tabs. These allow us to collate more searches, hashtags, and even users to your Keens.
When you make a Keen, the site asks you for search prompts which will help them fetch you Keen related content; however, it also has the feature to auto-populate the content for you. For instance, you like soccer, so you make a soccer-themed board called Keen, and Google will auto-populate it with content relevant to soccer.
So, you also have the privilege to sit back and let Keen do its work; then when you return, you might have a bunch of soccer videos, articles, blog posts, news, Wikipedia pages waiting for you. Shall we even discuss how good Google’s recommendations and content suggestions are?
Another Social Media Platform?
For years, Google has had many unsuccessful runs at developing a social networking site, and Keen is one such attempt with social features. Google believes Keen will allow humans to curate unique boards based on their interests and will enable them to share their passions with other fellow humans.
It also allows you to share your Keens with others or invite friends to act as collaborators in helping you build the best Keen you ever can. It also sends email alerts whenever new content is available.
Why should marketers be interested?
When it comes to Google, one can also assume that Keen is just another medium to fetch social data, interests, and preferences, which will further help in implementing personalized ads targeting and content across Google network. Should Keen survive the test of times, it can act as an excellent medium for display advertising.
Keen shows great potential to be distinguished as a personalized search site and content hub for any topic on earth. However, it should offer broader use cases to stand out from the Pinterest comparison and make its own identity.
Unless Google invests time and resources to let people know about the features of Keen and how to use them to hone their searching skills, it will be difficult for Keen to survive on its own and may fade away quietly just like it’s launch!
Where can you download Keen?
You can download the official Android app from the Google Play Store or start using Keen right now on the web.
