Google are back in the social network game. It was only April of last year when they announced they would be ending Google Plus. This new platform isn’t anything like the old, but it’s similar to something already on the market.
Keen is a platform created by Google’s Area 120 in collaboration with another in house group called People and AI Research (PAIR). The concept is very simple. Let’s say for example you are interested in Zimbabwean Culture and you want to collect resources on it. Instead of a Google search you can sign up to Keen on web or download the android app, and the app will offer you suggestions.
It then puts all these resources under one heading which you can share publicly or keep private. The idea is similar to Pinterest but with Google’s search and machine learning added.
Each topic of interest you create is called a “keen”. You can add or remove sources to your keen and more will be suggested as they become available. The technology behind this is similar to Google’s news feed app, but Keen doesn’t use the user’s search history. Keens are generated only on topics users put in.
Let’s say you want to explore music genres, may you’ve always wanted to start an indoor garden, or you may want to understand the science and mechanics of how things work keens for those topics, and more are already up. The platform is still pretty new and there are sure to be changes and improvements as it goes along. I’ll be trying it out for a couple of weeks so expect a proper review of it soon.
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