Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are big names in the technology industry. Mostly known for founding the now Meta-owned photo-sharing platform, Instagram.
Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 BILLION eleven years ago (back in 2012).
Now, the founders are back again with a new social app.
Here is what they’re building:
1. Instagram creators are in the news for founding a new App.
Instagram was co-founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010.
Kevin Systrom was born in 1983 in Massachusetts, USA. He studied management science and engineering at Stanford University and later joined Google as a product marketer. After working at Google for two years, he left to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Mike Krieger was born in 1986 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He moved to the United States to attend Stanford University, where he studied symbolic systems, which is a mix of computer science, philosophy, and psychology. Krieger met Kevin Systrom while taking a course in entrepreneurship and they later became friends.
Together, Systrom and Krieger created Instagram, which started as a photo-sharing app for the iPhone. Instagram quickly gained popularity and was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. Both Systrom and Krieger continued to work at Instagram after the acquisition, but they eventually left the company in 2018.
Instagram’s founders left the company four years back. Since then, they have worked on a new app for over a year.
What is the app?
2. They have founded a Personalized news feed app called Artifact.
Artifact is the first public venture Systrom and Krieger have announced since they left Facebook in 2018 after disagreements with management,
Artifact was in beta mode for a few weeks before being made public on 22 February 2023.
Founded by the makers of Instagram, Artifact uses AI and machine learning to personalise news reading. Artifact, the news-based social app created by Instagram’s founders, is now available to everyone.
Unlike Instagram, the app is focused on articles rather than photos.
It recommends content based on interests and allows discussion with friends.
Artifact is a kind of TikTok for text.
3. How does Artifact work?
Beta users tested two features;
- A feed showing articles posted by users that you have chosen to follow
- A direct message inbox so you can discuss the posts you read privately with friends.
“With the new version of our app, we’re also introducing new tools to help you personalise your experience, visualise your reading history, and see what’s popular in your network,” the Artifact team wrote in a blog post announcement on Medium.
“Our hope is to provide control over what you see in Feed and a new lens into what you and your network are finding most interesting.”
Users who download the app, available on both iOS and Android, will be able to connect to their contacts and see articles that are popular in their network, see stats on their reading history and patterns, as well as give Artifact feedback on articles they do not like for better personalisation.
“You can get started immediately using Artifact just by selecting your favourite interests. But if you’d like, you can now add a phone number from your Profile which will save your preferences and history,” the company added.
It said that adding a phone number allows users to log in across devices or regain access if they get a new phone.
4. Why did Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger create Artifact?
Founders wanted three things to happen:
a. A big new wave in consumer technology so could attempt to catch.
There is a significant new trend or development in the technology industry that other companies or products may try to emulate or follow in order to gain success or relevance.
This means that there is an opportunity for companies to ride this wave or trend and possibly achieve great success, but it also implies that it may be difficult to do so as the wave is big and therefore highly competitive.
In essence, while there is a significant shift or change happening in the technology industry, Artifact should be aware of it and potentially capitalize on it, but also recognize the challenges that come with trying to catch such a big wave.
b. A way to connect that wave to social technology.
The idea of integrating a new trend or development in consumer technology with social technology.
Social technology refers to the tools and platforms that enable people to connect and communicate with each other online, such as social media sites, messaging apps, and online forums.
By connecting the new wave in consumer technology with social technology, it is possible to create a more social or interactive experience for users. For example, if the new wave is related to virtual reality, a way to connect it to social technology could be to create a virtual reality social network where people can interact with each other in a virtual world.
By connecting the new wave in consumer technology to social technology, Artifact may be able to create new opportunities for user engagement, user-generated content, and community-building. However, it may also require significant resources and expertise to develop and maintain such integration, as well as careful consideration of user privacy and safety concerns.
c. An idea for how their product could solve a problem
Founders of Artifact proposed or suggested how a particular product or service could address a specific issue or challenge that people or organizations may face.
When developing a new product, it is important to identify a problem or need that the product can solve in order to create value for potential customers or users. The phrase implies that a company or individual has identified a specific problem and has developed an idea for how their product could address it in a unique or effective way.
For example, a company that creates a mobile app for tracking personal finances may have identified the problem of people struggling to manage their money and developed an idea for how their app could help users to track expenses, set budgets, and make informed financial decisions.
Having an idea for how a product could solve a problem is an important step in the product development process, as it can help to guide decisions related to design, features, and marketing. However, it is important to test and validate the idea with potential users or customers to ensure that the product actually meets their needs and is a viable solution to the problem.
5. How is Artifact different?
It will take the job of serving readers with high-quality news and information seriously.
In many ways, Artifact is reminiscent of Google Reader, an RSS newsreader app that Google sunset in 2013. The major difference between the two is that Artifact is powered by advancements in AI and machine learning to improve the user experience.
“Throughout the years, what I saw was that every time we used machine learning to improve the consumer experience, things got really good really quickly,” Systrom told The Verge last month, based on his experiences at Instagram.
Although, in 2014, a wave of personalized news apps with names like Zite and Pulse came and went, it will be interesting to witness the future of this news App, Artifact.
