Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of Instagram, have created a new platform called Artifact, a personalised news reader, to explore social apps. Anyone interested in using the app can sign up for the private beta version that is now available.
A brief about Co-founders of Instagram introduce a New Social App for News Reading
According to The TechCruch, Artifact is a newsreader that employs machine learning to customise the user experience while also incorporating social features that enable users to debate articles they come across with friends.
It will offer carefully chosen news articles, including those from outlets like the New York Times. Controls over comments, separate feeds for articles posted by people you follow along with their opinion, and a direct message inbox for more private discussion of postings are additional important elements.
When a user taps on a post to read it, the app will prioritise and push comparable content. Users of the Android and iOS app will be able to discuss articles with friends.
the release of the second social media platform created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. According to a story in The Verge, the pair have started a new business to investigate social apps, which includes the launch product Artifact, a customised news reader.
Although the app itself is not yet accessible to the general public, there is a waitlist where interested individuals can register. According to the description, it sounds like a modernised version of Google Reader, a discontinued RSS newsreader tool that Google discontinued in 2013. With the exception of this instance, Artifact is defined as a newsreader that combines social features that let users discuss articles they come across with friends with machine learning to customise the experience for the user. (To be fair, Google Reader had a capability similar to this, but the user had to design the app in order to directly add RSS feeds.)
According to an article on The Verge, Artifact will first display a curated selection of news pieces, but they will gradually adapt to the user’s preferences. The authors of some of the pieces, like The New York Times, will be well-known, while smaller websites may be the source of other items. Controls over comments, separate feeds for articles posted by people you follow along with their opinion, and a direct message inbox for more private discussion of postings are additional important elements.
The idea appears to share some similarities with one of Twitter’s more significant use cases for debating news. Additionally, it comes at a time when Twitter users are contemplating other choices following Elon Musk’s takeover of the service and his haphazard implementation of a number of divisive policy and roadmap changes that have alienated some steadfast Twitter users.
However, as it is currently described, Artifact doesn’t sound entirely unique; in addition to sounding like a contemporary take on a Google Reader-type experience, it would compete with a number of other news reading apps, both new and old, that feature personalization features, such as Flipboard, SmartNews, and Newsbreak. It also has a similar tone to Matter, a more recent rival of Pocket that combines news reading with expertly chosen recommendations and comments. Even Substack has now taken advantage of Twitter’s instability by introducing an in-app chat feature for its readers and writers. The strategy has been successful abroad with ByteDance’s Toutiao, but a U.S. adaptation would be challenging to create.
Of course, the new app would compete in many ways with Meta, the social giant that Instagram’s co-founders abandoned in 2018. Today, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to a lesser extent, serve as portals where billions interact and engage with news and information, in addition to updates from friends, family, groups, and businesses they follow.
That means that no matter how slick or distinct Artifact becomes, it will face a slew of competition in a market where consumers already have built-in news apps with Apple News and Google News.
