Pinterest, a social media platform and imageboard built around discovery and inspiration, is continuing its shift into e-commerce with a new augmented reality feature designed to simulate the in-store shopping experience.
Augmented reality, or AR, uses digital information to overlay or "augment" the physical world through a camera. The applications are boundless, but product brands, in particular, are piqued.
Pinterest is looking to facilitate that adoption on its popular pinboard, which has long inspired users to seek out the items so lovingly displayed on its platform.
"People have always come to Pinterest to shop," Jeremy King, senior vice president of engineering at Pinterest and former CTO of Walmart, told Cheddar. "Once you find that particular item that inspires you, many people want to know where to get it, how to build it, how to cook it."
In early 2020, the San Francisco-based company launched a "Try On" tool for lipstick products that allowed users to see themselves in different shades. Now it's expanding that feature to include eyeshadows from brands such as NYX Cosmetics, YSL, Lancôme, and Urban Decay.
Images of eligible products will include a "try on" button in their bottom right corner.
While, for the moment, the feature is limited to a very select number of items, King said Pinterest is refining the technology to include more users and more products.
For instance, the platform is tapping into its vast database of faces, so that different skin tones, angles, and lighting conditions are captured accurately through its AR tool. The goal is to build a system that detects every item presented on Pinterest and give users the opportunity to look up and purchase that item. King called this pipeline "inspiration to action."
The coronavirus pandemic has also brought more and different types of potential customers to the platform, which draws nearly half a billion users per month.
"The biggest categories right now are Gen Z and men," King said. "Gen Z is actually growing at twice the rate of our other categories."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
