Pinterest Buys Startup Specializing in Visual Search Technology
Pinterest has announced its acquisition of VisualGraph, a San Francisco-based purveyor of image recognition and visual search technology.
By Geoff Weiss •
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With its eye on sharpening its search functionality, Pinterest has bought VisualGraph, a builder of image recognition and visual search technology.
As a result, VisualGraph's two employees, founder Kevin Jing and colleague David Liu, have joined Pinterest's engineering team.
Pinterest says the purchase will result in deeper understanding of how people use the online scrapbooking site. "The acquisition of VisualGraph will help us build technology to better understand what people are Pinning," Pinterest said in a statement. "By doing so, we hope to make it easier for people to find the things they love."
Related: Pinterest Introduces 'Place Pins' to Showcase What Your Business Location Has to Offer
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Jing is a former Google engineer, where he helped build some of the company's first machine vision applications. Liu also held internships at Google and Facebook and recently completed his master's degree in computer science at Stanford.
"While a single image can captivate and inspire, a network of connected images allows for inspiration, exploration and discovery at scale," noted Jing and Liu on the VisualGraph website, adding that their aim will be to "build a visual discovery experience that is both aesthetically appealing and immensely useful for people everywhere."
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