{"id":341852,"date":"2017-05-25T01:28:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T17:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1495220"},"modified":"2017-05-25T01:28:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T17:28:36","slug":"amazon-adds-shoppable-stickers-to-its-ios-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/amazon-adds-shoppable-stickers-to-its-ios-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon adds shoppable stickers to its iOS app"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Using stickers to decorate your photos is a common feature found in social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others. But today, stickers have started showing up in a more surprising place: Amazon\u2019s mobile app. Following a recent update<\/a>, Amazon has added support for stickers within\u00a0its iOS app\u2019s\u00a0camera feed\u00a0\u2013 the feature that allows you to search for products on its site by viewing real-world objects\u00a0through\u00a0your phone\u2019s camera.<\/p>\n

This is an odd, but interesting move by the company, which has been upgrading\u00a0its flagship mobile application to offer more than just traditional shopping in recent months.<\/p>\n

For example, Amazon integrated its virtual assistant Alexa into its app<\/a>\u00a0this March, allowing consumers to play music while they shop, ask questions, check the news and weather, control their smart home, and more. It also launched \u201cOutfit Compare\u201d in its shopping app<\/a> around the same time \u2013 ahead of the launch of its\u00a0Echo Look<\/a> smart device,\u00a0whose own companion app<\/a> offers the same \u201cfashion\u00a0advice\u201d feature.<\/p>\n

Stickers integration, however, makes less sense.<\/p>\n

While meant as another means of encouraging\u00a0product discovery, it\u2019s not clear how Amazon intends this feature to be used.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Amazon, after all, is not a social app \u2013 it\u2019s a retailer. And the camera feature it offers is meant to be\u00a0an alternative way of kicking off a product search, not a tool to take personal photos to share with friends. Today, in addition to\u00a0scanning a barcode or typing in a search term, Amazon\u2019s app can also identify\u00a0objects through the camera, then suggest related products, similar to Pinterest and Google\u2019s visual search products.<\/p>\n

To use Amazon\u2019s\u00a0new stickers, you\u2019ll still launch the camera as usual by tapping the camera icon next to the search box on the Amazon\u00a0app\u2019s home screen.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll then see a new \u201cAmazon Stickers\u201d button on the bottom left of the screen, next to the camera app\u2019s other features like Package X-Ray (scanning an Amazon package\u2019s barcode to see what\u2019s inside), uploading a photo, or viewing your search history.<\/p>\n

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The stickers themselves are organized into various categories, like \u201cTop Picks,\u201d \u201cFun,\u201d \u201cHome,\u201d \u201cPets,\u201d \u201cWomen\u2019s,\u201d \u201cGadgets,\u201d and more. There are also curated collections like \u201cGold,\u201d \u201cLegos,\u201d \u201cWood,\u201d \u201cWorkspace,\u201d and others.<\/p>\n

If these stickers or those categories look familiar, it\u2019s because they\u2019re being pulled from Amazon\u2019s \u201cInteresting Finds\u201d online shop. Launched last year<\/a>, \u201cInteresting Finds\u201d offers a curated product discovery experience on Amazon, similar to the shopping service from the startup Canopy<\/a>. Advertised today via a homepage banner, \u201cInteresting Finds\u201d is sort of like Amazon\u2019s Pinterest \u2013 it gives you a way to browse the site\u00a0to find fun items you might like, follow collections, and save items\u00a0to your favorites.<\/p>\n

The stickers mirror the styles used by \u201cInteresting Finds,\u201d and link to the same recommended products.<\/p>\n

With the camera feed live, you can browse through the categories and tap to add stickers to the scene in front of you. Because there\u2019s no selfie camera support, you can\u2019t really virtually try on clothing with the feature, but you could perhaps use stickers to see how a\u00a0home d\u00e9cor\u00a0product\u00a0would look in your room.<\/p>\n

But the style of the stickers themselves \u2013 with their cartoonish, white jagged edges \u2013 doesn\u2019t make this\u00a0AR-like functionality all that practical in terms of visualizing your potential redecorations. (At least, not compared with more serious attempts\u00a0at AR for shopping like\u00a0Wayfair\u2019s \u201cView in Room\u201d feature,<\/a> for example.)<\/p>\n

In addition, you can tap on the \u201ci\u201d (information) button on the stickers themselves to be taken to the product detail page.<\/p>\n

You can also add multiple stickers to a single photo, resize them, delete them, then save the resulting image to your Camera Roll or share to social networks.<\/p>\n

Chris Messina first spotted the stickers<\/a> in the app yesterday, following the iOS update. But it appears that the feature was being trialed\u00a0earlier this month,\u00a0according<\/a> to tweets<\/a>\u00a0from what appears to be an Amazon test account.<\/p>\n

Amazon has yet to respond to requests for comment about the launch.<\/p>\n

Currently, we\u2019re seeing Amazon Stickers on iOS<\/a>\u00a0only, not Android.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Using stickers to decorate your photos is a common feature found in social apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others. But today, stickers have started showing up in a more surprising place: Amazon’s mobile app. Following a recent update, Amazon has added support for stickers within\u00a0its iOS app’s\u00a0camera feed\u00a0– the feature that allows you to search for… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-341852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}