• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 28, 2020

In close partnership with top beauty and cosmetic brands, Pinterest just launched “Try On” — an augmented reality tool designed to help users find the perfect shade of lipstick.  

Powered by Pinterest’s Lens visual search technology, the new tool is part of the company’s broader “try before you buy” approach to mobile commerce.

Once users find a lipstick they feel compliments their particular skin tone and facial features, the new tool allows them to purchase it directly from various brands, including YSL Beauté, Lancôme, Urban Decay from L’Oreal, Neutrogena, Estee Lauder and Sephora.

With “Try On,” Pinterest was determined to develop a tool that stood apart from other augmented-reality offerings.

“We’re doing something different from other platforms. Not only integrating with our skin tone ranges feature, so shoppers can fine tune their search to best match their skin, but offering visual recommendations for similar looks, based on the products and looks already saved to Pinterest,” a company spokeswoman said this week.

“We’ve also skipped the skin filtering and smoothing elements of other AR features,” she said. “We’ve built Try On from day one without beautification options that make you look anything less than yourself.”

Although Pinterest is presently focused on lipstick, the new “Try On” tool has obvious implications for the broader beauty and cosmetics market. “We’re starting with lipstick, and you’ll see more Lens launches from us in the coming months,” the spokeswoman added.

Surpassing Snapchat, Pinterest recently established itself as the third-largest social-media platform among U.S. consumers.

That’s according to a recent report from eMarketer, which estimated the Pin-based platform saw domestic membership grow by 9.1% to 82.4 million users last year. That bested Snap Inc.’s flagship platform, which ended the year with 80.2 million U.S. users, according to eMarketer.

Along with a successful IPO in 2019, Pinterest’s success has been due to its broad appeal, according to eMarketer forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam.

“While Snapchat has a young core audience that it caters to, Pinterest has a more universal appeal, and it’s made significant gains in a wide range of age groups,” Islam noted in the report.

Partly as a result of these gains, Islam predicted Pinterest will remain ahead of Snapchat for the foreseeable future.