What has Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger been up to since selling their start-up to Facebook (now Meta) in 2012 and then leaving Meta in 2018? Artifact is their new project, which is a recommendation- and AI-driven app for news. As you keep reading articles, the app begins to personalise your feed. The system is based on the time you spend reading about certain subjects; it’s not about clicks and comments. And on the platform are articles from both left and right-leaning outlets but the company is against promoting false news. Consider this to be Instagram or TikTok for news.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger
The app went live a few weeks ago but only in the last few days, it has been made accessible to everyone. Anyone on iOS or Android can download Artifact to try it.
When users sign up, the app asks for their areas of interest and then shows a screen of media outlets behind a paywall, so you are informed. Once you go past that screen, news items populate the feed. Slowly it learns your preferences. At the moment, the ‘For You’ tab is showing items the user will be interested in but many of the news items are days old. The headlines tab is more useful. Here, under each headline, there is a number mentioned, which refers to articles that talk about the headline in question. Clicking a headline opens up all the articles. There is also a profile tab where it shows the kind of articles you are reading but you have to use it for a few days to get an answer. For the time being, it’s mostly international publications that have a run of the feed.
The company is working on a few new features, like allowing users to thumbs-down an article, which will ensure they see fewer articles like it. You’ll also be able to sync your contacts with the app and that will help you know the articles popular within your network.
Speaking to Stratechery, Kevin Systrom said: “I say to Mike, you can go to all these bookstores or these conferences and get advice about what to do the first time and what not to do the first time, but there’s literally zero books or zero conferences that focus on what not to do the second time and it turns out you just make a whole host of different mistakes. But to look back on our experience, I think that what helps having founded Instagram, is you fully expect the volatility of the experience, it’s not surprising at all.”