Tag: artifact

Artifact News Reader is Being Shut Down

I’ve enjoyed using Artifact and it’s upsetting that it’s being shut down because it really seemed like it was on its way to be a really good news reader. It’s often the first or second app I open to kickstart the day. I like that Artifact lets you load an AI-generated article summary if you don’t have time to read the full story.

Artifact at some point added social elements but people just didn’t see it that way because it’s a news reader first and foremost. It also let you publish your own takes of the news linking to them, making it a blog platform. This part I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t post too many times but enough to keep me writing my thoughts on things that bugged me.

They said Artifact will remain up until til the end of February. I’ll be spending some time to republish those posts here and backdating them accordingly.

Ultimately for a blogger it all comes back to running your own space if you want to keep your published thoughts available to read on the web. Maybe one day I’ll eventually decide to have my own self hosted blog and social web instance like it’s always meant to be and move everything to that because platforms like there, including Medium and Tumblr, may one day shut down if they can’t justify keeping them around whether through lack of revenue or something else.

For my daily news reading there’s always Flipboard which I also still use regularly but I’m going to miss Artifact.

Shutting down Artifact

Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have reteamed to launch Artifact, an AI driven personalized news feed that also lets you and your friends discuss about each story you share.

Casey Newton, who broke the news, calls it TikTok for text. From his description it sounds like AI driven Flipboard with chat.

As you can see from the screenshot registration is limited to US phone numbers for the time being. They’re clearly in testing mode and managing traffic. The whitelist, iPhone exclusive period, and pretty interface create a FOMO mindset among those who can’t get in yet.

It’s the stereotypical Silicon Valley product launch. Create a pretty app and generate widespread hype and FOMO by limiting access and riding on the news wave and public chatter.

From John Gruber’s take it’s not a promising start, maybe it’s far too early to judge. Right now it’s closer to a newsreader than a social app of any kind, and maybe that is the whole point and the conversation aspect is just a minor feature.