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NEW YORK, United States — Pinterest, the online pinboard for sharing everything from wedding china ideas to travel inspiration, is introducing a visual search tool.
Beginning Monday, users can tap on a magnifying glass icon on the corner of Pinterest posts and zoom in on the item they want to search for — for example, a lamp in a photo of a room. Visually similar items pop up in a search window.
Pinterest, which has 50 billion pins and 100 million monthly active users, says the new feature is designed to help people find items in photos for which they do not have a name.
Pinterest joins several other companies working on improving visual search tools. E-commerce powerhouse Amazon made visual search a key feature in its Fire smartphone. Even though the phone fizzled out, the visual search technology is still available via its app. The service can recognize 100 million items. And Google introduced Google Goggles visual search Android app in 2009.
By Mae Anderson.
