Pinterest, the photo sharing site known for its image collection on topics such as food, shopping items and home decors, has acquired VisualGraph, builder of image recognition and visual search technology, to better recognize and capitalize on the images posted by its users.
Pinterest announced its acquisition of the San Francisco-based image recognition startup but did not disclose the terms of the deal. VisualGraph's two-men team consisting of its founder Kevin Jing and colleague David Liu will be joining Pinterest. They will lead a new "visual discovery team," a Pinterest spokesperson said. Prior to starting VisualGraph, Jing worked at Google and developed the "first image processing application" at the company.
VisualGraph's acquisition is seen to help improve image discovery on Pinterest and allow the company to better understand how people use the pinboard-style photo-sharing website. "The acquisition of VisualGraph will help us build technology to better understand what people are Pinning," Pinterest said in a statement. "By doing so, we hope to make it easier for people to find the things they love."
VisualGraph has developed a technology that can analyze images across the internet and identify connections among them. "While a single image can captivate and inspire, a network of connected images allows for inspiration, exploration and discovery at scale," posted Jing and Liu on the VisualGraph website.
Although Pinterest already offers a search tool for its users, it still relies on image caption to know what is in a picture. VisualGraph's technology could come in handy since it can improve the search feature to return results that aren't clearly marked. "Our approach is to combine the state-of-the-art machine vision tools, such as object recognition (e.g. shoes, faces), with large-scale distributed search and machine learning infrastructures," shared Jing and Liu.
The technology is crucial for the company's ad based monetization strategy as well. Considering the large amount of images users post across Pinterest's website, VisualGraph's technology would allow Pinterest to learn more about how people use its site and use this information to ink new business deals.
