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Latest Technology Launches Two Twenty: Its Own In-House Incubator for New Projects

In recently, Pinterest has an incubator that’s behind the development of latest products launched shoppable TV channel, the social media site revealed in a blog post Tuesday. It is also called Two-Twenty, after the address of company’s first office and is an in-house, cross-functional experimental products team made up of engineers, content, designers and product experts dedicated for the rapid testing and developing for the great ideas, said Pinterest. Two-Twenty is where rapid innovation happens across disciplines bringing the latest in technology together with the emotional wellbeing to build products that complement people’s lives, rather than consume them, Meredith Arthur said, content lead for Two-Twenty.

The company said that incubator come from its Makeathons, where employees come together to work on the passion projects and hacks that they do not have time of their normal scope of work, as well as from a submission portal also called Idea Factory. Two-Twenty scientist, prototypes and tests ideas to find products that can be brought to scale. Two-Twenty, that prioritize the collaborative approach and accelerate ideas from the employees around the company, David Temple said.

The team’s first exploration was live-streamed creator events which culminated in Pinterest TV launching in just on November. The team also launched for the virtual studio with producers who work directly with creators to develop content. Creators can showcase and tag products for the purchase on the media channel. The San Francisco-based on the company said that creators who hosted episodes during its pilot phase substantially increased of their following on the platform, sometimes by as much as double.

Customers can tap an icon in the upper left corner of the app to watch Pinterest TV and shows are recorded so they can be viewed on-demand. The idea to developed an in-house team now dedicated for the latest new project ideas comes at a time when Pinterest is trying to reinvent itself for the modern era of online social, which is more focused on the formats like video and live streaming amid a maturing creator economy.

The launch of Pinterest TV represented for the significant pivot away from Pinterest’s original idea of an online image pinboard where the customer research and developing new ideas, which sometimes translate for the online purchase. With video and live shopping, Pinterest goals to better attract for the younger demographic who has grown up with social apps such as Instagram and TikTok, where video and live content is core to the experience. If it fails to successfully make this shift, it could be on its way out as a top social platform. (In fact, exit talks may already be happening. There were recent reports that Pinterest and PayPal were discussing a deal, but PayPal said it’s not pursuing an acquisition at this time.)

Pinterest explained for the new incubation team will field ideas from an online submission portal also known as “Idea Factory” as well as from its companywide Makeathons. The team will then further experiment for the ideas and prototypes to see if any gain traction. In currently, there will be one to two projects underway, some of which will see the light of day and others which will be pulled back if not successful more like how a startup would experiment. Since 2019, like Facebook, for example, launched “NPE Team” to test new ideas and features, to see how users would react. But over the years, none have scaled to become of their own, new Facebook (now Meta) brand and they have instead informed the development of other Facebook and Instagram features. Meanwhile, Google had been allowing for the more entrepreneurial-minded employees to experiment within its Area 120 in-house incubator.

By comparison, this team has launched for the number of successful products that have exited to other areas of Google’s business such as Search, Shopping, Commerce and Cloud. That team has now been elevated with the recent sees it under new leadership and paired alongside other long-term-focused innovations such as the holographic videoconferencing project called Project Starline.Two-Twenty, have prioritized for the collaborative approach and accelerate ideas from employees around the company, said Temple, in an announcement. “With the resources of an established brand, they are able to explore and invest for the new solutions to help people find inspiration to live a life.