Pinterest debuts a new app, Shuffles, for creating collages and mood boards – TechCrunch

Pinterest may be best known for shopping inspiration and design ideas, but the company’s latest product aims to inspire its users to harness their own creativity. The company has quietly launched a new iOS app called Shuffles, which can be used to create collages from photos, crops, and other animated effects. The app is currently in an invite-only state with the ability to join a waiting list from the home screen.

According to Shuffles’ description on the App Store, Pinterest’s photo library allows users to create their own collages or use the camera to snap photos of objects they want to include. You can also crop individual objects from an image by tapping them – a feature reminiscent of iOS 16’s clever cropping ability. Images in shuffles can then be rotated, layered and resized on screen to create the collage, and optional animations and effects can be added. The final project can be shared with friends for collaboration or posted to public groups where others can “remix” the original creation in their own way.

The description of the app suggests that it could be used to visualize a room makeover, fashion ideas, mood boards and more.

While the company hadn’t officially announced its plans for Shuffles, a Pinterest spokesperson confirmed that the app comes from its new internal incubator, TwoTwenty.

“Shuffles is a standalone app developed by TwoTwenty, Pinterest’s innovative founding team. Shuffles is an engaging way to create, publish and share visual content,” said the spokesperson. “As more people visit our platform for creative inspiration, we’re constantly experimenting with new ways to help pinners and creators bring their ideas to life.”

“As this app is in its initial testing phase, we don’t have any further details on the recordings at this time,” they added, declining to reveal more about their future plans or monetization potential.

TwoTwenty was founded last November and named after Pinterest’s first office. TwoTwenty’s goal was to encourage more internal experimentation in the social network and increase the pace of innovation. Other tech giants including Meta, Microsoft and Google are making similar efforts with their own incubators – NPE, Microsoft Garage and Area 120 respectively.

In the case of Pinterest, the company has worked to make the transition from its past as an image board and bookmarking site that drives e-commerce transactions to adapt to today’s creator-centric era, where consumers are being asked to make purchases through video content. To meet consumer demand for video, Pinterest released its TikTok-like Idea Pins and a live shopping feature, Pinterest TV. Incidentally, the latter was also brought to life by the TwoTwenty team.

But TwoTwenty isn’t just about experimenting with video. The organization, made up of engineers, designers and other product experts, aims to research, prototype and test a variety of new ideas to see if they catch on. Those that do are handed off to other teams within the organization to scale.

The early-stage Shuffles project is just one of those ideas.

What’s funny is that Pinterest’s new app resembles a mobile collage maker that Meta ran through its own incubator, the NPE team, a few years ago. Known as E.gg, the zine maker developed a small following who enjoyed creating mixed-media collages that combined images, text, and GIFs. But like almost all of Meta’s NPE projects, E.gg was shut down. Pinterest’s Shuffles could be trying to tap into the same consumer demand for image-driven creativity and inspiration that Meta had abandoned.

The app also comes at a time when there’s an undercurrent of resistance to the idea that video has to be the only form of social expression and creativity on social media, as all the tech giants try to morph into TikTok. Last month, user reaction against Instagram’s deprioritization of friends’ content and photos peaked after even the Kardashians begged the app to stop trying to be TikTok. As a result, Instagram has reverted some of its recent changes but is still set for a video-first future.

Pinterest probably understands, to some extent, that its own video hub may not be able to hold users’ attention indefinitely given the TikTok threat. Finding another area of ​​growth through experimentation could open up new avenues for him to explore.

Financially, the company’s earnings last quarter proved solid by the numbers, but it missed out on user growth. Monthly active users declined 9% year over year to 433 million.

The company will announce its second quarter results after the market close today. Notably, this will be the first earnings since new CEO Bill Ready took over the job from co-founder Ben Silbermann, who moved to executive chairman on June 29, 2022.