Celebrating one year of Pinterest Lens

A year ago we introduced Lens, a first-of-its-kind camera search that recommends ideas to try inspired by things you see offline.

Since its launch, we’ve been thrilled to hear all the ways Pinners are using Lens in their lives. For example, Krissy, a Pinner in Georgia, uses Lens at the grocery store to find recipes based on what’s on sale—like these avocado fries. And others use Lens to find outfits for date night, to try new beauty looks or even reverse engineer some of their favorite restaurant dishes.

Today there are more than twice as many Pinners using Lens every day compared to just six months ago. People now do more than 600 million visual searches every month across Lens, our browser extension and the visual search tool inside Pins. That’s a 140 percent increase year over year.

Image of someone using Lens feature in the Pinterest app

Over the last year, the more people searched, the better Lens got. We moved Lens to the front of our apps and gave it its first makeover. We also added shortcuts to make it faster to search.

We introduced Pincodes, a QR code-type technology which enables you to find inspiration while you're out shopping or flipping through your favorite magazines. We also launched Lens your Look to take the guesswork out of outfit planning and bring together text and image searches in one query.

We partnered with Samsung to bring visual search to its latest smartphones worldwide. We also worked with Target to give you a way to search their catalog using related products you see in the real world.

The visual search technology that powers Lens is more advanced than ever. Compared to a year ago, it understands more than five times as many things, including hundreds of recipe ingredients, thousands of styles of clothing and countless more objects you might find around your home. The underlying visual model is rebuilt nightly, which means we’re continuously recognizing new objects and improving our accuracy.

And of course we’re still hard at work bringing you more ways to Lens. Next week, we’ll start rolling out the ability to add Lens images to any text search on iOS (Android coming soon). So you can find a piece of art for your walls, a couch that’ll go with your favorite armchair or a casserole recipe that uses that weird vegetable you just discovered.

Image of someone taking a picture of a shirt with Pinterest Lens

To wrap up, we’re celebrating a year of Lens by sharing some search trends. 

 

Top categories for Lens searches:

  • Fashion
  • Home decor
  • Art
  • Food
  • Products
  • Animals
  • Outfits
  • Beauty
  • Vehicles
  • Travel

 

Top trending Lens searches:

  • Tattoos
  • Nails
  • Sunglasses
  • Jeans
  • Cats
  • Wedding dress
  • Plants
  • Quilts
  • Brownies
  • Natural hair

 

Thank you to Pinners for helping us improve Lens every day.