Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have launched a new venture called Artifact. The co-founders of Instagram, who left Facebook in 2018 due to disagreements with their parent company, are focusing on developing next-generation social apps. Their first product, Artifact, is a personalized news feed that utilizes machine learning to understand your interests. In the near future, it will also allow users to have discussions about the articles with their friends.
Artifact can be described as a text-based version of TikTok or a revitalized mobile app version of Google Reader. It can even be seen as a surprise attack on Twitter. The app begins with a feed of popular articles curated from a variety of publishers, ranging from well-known news organizations like
The New York Times to niche topic blogs. By tapping on articles that catch your attention, Artifact will provide you with similar posts and stories in the future, similar to how TikTok adjusts its algorithm over time based on the videos you watch on its For You page.
Krieger and Systrom are placing their bet on the power of artificial intelligence-driven algorithms to engage the general public with their app. Sign-ups for the Artifact app opened last week on
artifact.news, and the app is now available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Currently, the app only displays a centrally ranked feed, but it will soon introduce another feed that shows articles posted by other users you choose to follow. The app will also offer a private messaging inbox for users to discuss posts with their friends. These features are not yet available in the stable version of the app.
We tested the Artifact app on an Android device. During the initial setup, users are prompted to select 10 or more topics of interest, which are then organized into different tabs. The app also asks users to select their preferred news publisher subscriptions in order to prioritize news from those sources in the feed. The top headlines are displayed in a separate tab.
The 'For You' section is initially empty, and reading at least 25 articles within a two-week period is necessary for the app to better personalize your feed. Users also have the option to bookmark articles for later viewing. Given the current lack of social features in the stable version of Artifact, the app appears to be primarily a news-reading app rather than a social platform.
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