Pinterest has been quite busy lately with the launch of "place pins" back in November of 2013, and the purchase of an image search start-up called VisualGraph. Today, the company is sharing its plans for the future, which includes two new features.
The two features are called Guided Search and Custom Categories. These features should allow Pinterest to become more user friendly by allowing its fan-base to locate images easily than before. The idea behind these new features is that whenever users begin to search for something imprecise, Pinterest search engine should guide them towards a subcategory to make their search much easier.
"To help you find the best ideas, today we're introducing Guided Search. It's made for exploring, whether you know exactly what you want, or you're just starting to look around," said Pinterest in a blog post. "There are more than 750 million boards with 30 billion Pins hand-picked by travelers, foodies, and other Pinners, so the right idea is just a few taps away."
What is Guided Search?
Well, Guided Search is simply what we've explained above. If you're not sure what you're searching for, just begin typing and Pinterest should bring up keywords and categories relating to your search. As per the team behind Guided Search, the feature was designed to work with a one-handed process, which means it should fit well when used on mobile.
Both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store versions of the Pinterest app will be updated with Guided Search.
What is Custom Categories?
Pinterest is adding more narrowly focused categories along with alternatives because many users' interests do not fall under the same category. So far, Pinterest only has 32 categories; Custom Categories should increase this number a great deal.
The company will be rolling out this feature slowly, so don't expect to see it anytime soon.
With new features, come improvements to already established features. If you're a Pinterest user, you might have known about Related Pins. It's basically a service that helps users find more pins, the only problem with this feature, was that it was not established on a broad scale.
However, Pinterest is now planning to make it available on 90 percent of all pins.
As it stands, it appears that Pinterest's purchase of start-up VisualGraph had some influence on the new features. The team so far is not working on a new project, so the time was spent helping to bring these new features to life.
