Foap is a fast-growing photography marketplace that receives thousands of new user-uploaded photos every day. In order to connect brands with the images they’re looking for, Foap had to find a way to consistently tag all these photos and make them easily searchable.
1. HIGH VOLUMES: How do you know what you’re getting from user-generated content?
Because most of Foap’s photos come from individual photographers, the tags and metadata attached are often inconsistent. For example, an image of a dog might be tagged “dog” or it might be tagged “fuzzy wuzzy waggy tail fur baby”. They needed a solution that could “see” each image and apply the appropriate tags in an accurate and consistent way.
2. VALUE EXTRACTION: How do you ensure your users find what they’re looking for?
Foap is a marketplace, so it serves both buyers and sellers. With image recognition, Foap wanted to come up with new and exciting ways to add value to both categories of their users.
“Clarifai helps increase the chances for people to sell their photos by surfacing the right image to the right buyer at the right time. Clarifai is now the absolute core of Foap’s tagging mechanism, making images findable in the Foap marketplace.” – David Los, Foap Founder & CEO
Foap uses Clarifai’s visual recognition solution to scale its marketplace and improve the user experience for both buyers and sellers.
When a user uploads an image to Foap, the app automatically suggests relevant tags for every image using the Clarifai API. Users still have the option to add their own tags as well. That way, Foap ensures consistency across user-generated content from different creators but also allows for creativity and flexibility in the tags.
Clarifai’s tags are also baked into the Foap app’s search so that brands and photographers are able to find exactly what they’re looking for. Now, not only is it easier for photographers to manage their portfolios and make their offerings more attractive, it’s also easier to surface the right content to buyers so they make more purchases.
Improving the user experience
Taking photos is fun – filling in the metadata? Not so much. Using Clarifai to suggest tags to users not only helps categorize and curate user-generated content, it also creates a great user experience. Foap’s users want to earn money from the photos on their phone in as seamless a way as possible, and suggested keywords are an easy and quick way for users to make sure their photos are found by the right buyers. And not only do the suggested tags connect users with buyers, they also enable users to search through their own archives and organize their libraries.
“In a stock photo marketplace, missing or incorrect keywords means sellers missing opportunities to connect with buyers. With Clarifai, our users get relevant suggested tags that make it easy for them to keyword their photos. People are adding 30% more tags to each image with greater accuracy than ever before.”
Building a two-way marketplace
A traditional stock photo marketplace allows users to upload images, and buyers to browse and purchase those images. But, Foap’s marketplace is especially innovative because they implemented a fun and creative way to allow buyers to source images from creators called “Foap Missions.” Missions are prompts given by brands to encourage submissions from creators. These uploads are also tagged with the Clarifai API, making them easy to search and sort.
Quick and easy implementation
Foap’s founder, David Los, implemented Clarifai as a cornerstone of his product for its accuracy, flexibility, and affordability. With a team of five developers, David was able to get Clarifai’s core model up and running in only a couple hours and a few lines of code. By investing in Clarifai, David’s team saved 40 hours per week in manual keywording and moderation!
“Clarifai saves us time and money, eliminates manual keywording, and creates a user experience that our customers love. It’s amazing how Clarifai’s solution “just works.” Plus, their customer service is amazing!”
DIY with Clarifai
Now that you’ve been inspired by Foap’s solution, it’s time to build your own. Clarifai’s core model includes tags for over 11,000 concepts you can apply to your business. All it takes is three simple lines of code – sign up for a developer API account to get started for free!
