Google quietly launches Keen, an AI-powered social curation app to take on Pinterest

Last Friday, Google quietly unveiled an app that lets you curate content from the web, similar to Pinterest. The idea for Keen came out of Google internal incubator project called Area 120. Unlike Pinterest, Keen will use machine learning to recommend articles and pictures.

Keen is now available through the browser or an Android app, with sign-in via a user’s Google account. The website is comprised of large animations and a scrolling ticker of things users might be interested in such as “be a better introvert” and “Start an organic farm.”

With Keen, you can curate for yourself or for other people. You can also use Keen to build a collection of your best resources on a topic you know well and share it with people who would enjoy your curation. The keens can be private or public, so you control what is shared and who can contribute.

Keen can also save multiple kinds of content, including but not limited to articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, and shopping links. Users can also follow other keens that have been created, similar to following another person’s board on Pinterest. You can alternatively make them private, visible to only the user that created it. Google’s Cj Adams wrote in a blog post:

“The more you save to a keen and organize it, the better the recommendations become. Even if you’re not an expert on a topic, you can start curating a keen and save a few interesting “gems” or links that you find helpful. These bits of content act like seeds and help keen discover more and more related content over time. You can also follow keens that others have created, discovering thousands of hand-curated lists from the community and getting alerts when new things are added.”

Adams added:

“You make a ‘keen,’ which can be about any topic, whether it’s baking delicious bread at home, getting into birding or researching typography. Keen lets you curate the content you love, share your collection with others and find new content based on what you have saved.”

Below is a quick overview of how Keen works.