Pinterest has outlined its newest method to content material suggestions, which makes use of AI evaluation of person behaviors to find out their possible intent in utilizing Pinterest.
The method goals to find out every person’s “journey,” as in what they’re truly seeking to obtain by their Pin discovery and motion course of.
As defined by Pinterest:
“A person journey is a sequence of user-item interactions, typically spanning a number of classes, that facilities on a selected curiosity and divulges a transparent intent — comparable to exploring tendencies or making a purchase order. For instance, a journey would possibly contain an curiosity in ‘summer season attire,’ an intent to ‘study what’s in type,’ and a context of being ‘prepared to purchase.’ Customers can have a number of, typically overlapping, journeys occurring concurrently as their pursuits and targets evolve.”
So Pinterest is seeking to broaden its suggestions past associated Pins to what every person is prone to be searching for subsequent inside every journey, primarily based on different customers’ behaviors, in addition to the total scope of every individual’s exercise.
And it’s working. By way of this up to date suggestions method, Pinterest has improved e-mail click on fee by 88%, whereas person surveys have proven 23% extra constructive suggestions.
The method basically makes use of a wider breadth of indicators to grasp the possible aim of every person, versus extra direct suggestions.
“By figuring out person journeys, we will transfer from easy content material suggestions to turning into a platform that assists customers in attaining their targets, whether or not it’s planning a marriage, renovating a kitchen, or studying a brand new talent.”
As you’ll be able to see on this diagram, the method makes use of a stepped course of to higher perceive the directional intent of every person’s exercise, and incorporates AI predictions throughout the mannequin to map and identify widespread journeys.
The primary indicators, as you’ll be able to see, are:
- Person search historical past: Aggregated queries and timestamps.
- Person exercise historical past: Interactions like Pin closeups, repins, and clickthroughs, extract the annotations and pursuits from the engaged Pins.
- Person’s boards: Extract the annotations and pursuits from the Pins within the person’s boards.
Based mostly on these parts, the system makes use of clustering to generate key phrase clusters, with every cluster being a “journey candidate.”
“We then construct specialised fashions for journey rating, stage prediction, naming, and enlargement. This inference pipeline runs on a streaming system, permitting us to run full inference if there’s algorithm change, or every day incremental inference for latest lively customers so the journeys reply rapidly to a person’s most up-to-date actions.”
In order the customers’ conduct adjustments, the journey prediction mannequin evolves, with LLMs then employed to generate new journey suggestions “primarily based on a person’s previous or ongoing journeys.”
That then drives Pinterest’s e-mail push suggestions, prompting customers to return to the platform to proceed their journeys as predicted by the mannequin.
And that’s led to vital enhancements in e-mail response.
It might appear considerably apparent in some respects, in predicting possible person conduct primarily based on their exercise, and mapping that towards possible discovery paths. But it surely’s a major evolution of predictive fashions on this respect, because the system appears to anticipate what you’ll wish to see subsequent, primarily based on AI evaluation of your path.
It’s an fascinating growth inside Pinterest’s broader progress, which reveals how platforms could make higher use of AI inside their predictive fashions to reinforce the person expertise.
You’ll be able to examine Pinterest’s predictive journey modeling right here.

