Artifact was a personalized social

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital Content (media), content such as online newsp ...

app that uses

recommender system A recommender system (RecSys), or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing ''system'' with terms such as ''platform'', ''engine'', or ''algorithm'') and sometimes only called "the algorithm" or "algorithm", is a subclass of information fi ...

s to suggest articles. Launched in January 2023 by Nokto, Inc., a company founded by co-founders of

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

Kevin Systrom Kevin Systrom (born December 30, 1983) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Instagram, along with Mike Krieger. Systrom was included on the list of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 2016. Under Systrom as CE ...

and

Mike Krieger Michel Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram along with Kevin Systrom, and served as its CTO. During Krieger's tenure as CTO, Instagram's user base expanded from a few million to 1 ...

, the app is available for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and Android. The app’s name is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the words "articles", "artificial intelligence", and "fact". The app shut down in January 2024 as a result of low interest.

History

Nokto, Inc. was established on March 3, 2022, as a foreign stock company in California, with its headquarters in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The company's main product, Artifact, is the first new product launched by Krieger and Systrom since their 2018 resignation from Instagram after conflicts with parent company Meta, which acquired Instagram in 2012. Artifact launched on January 31, 2023, after the team had been working on it for over a year, offering the option to sign up for a waiting list for its private

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

, which grew to about 160,000 people, and then launching in open beta on February 22, 2023. With a team of seven employees in San Francisco, the app was free throughout its lifetime, with the founders explaining at the time that different business models - such as advertising or subscription fees - could be explored in the future. In January 2024, cofounder Kevin Systrom announced that the app would be shutting down after concluding that "the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way." In April 2024, it was announced Artifact had been acquired by

Yahoo Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, an ...

, who intended to use the service's technology in an upgraded

Yahoo! News Yahoo News (stylized as Yahoo! News) is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo. The site was created by Yahoo software engineer Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such ...

app.

Features

Frequently described as "

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

for text" and a competitor to

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, Artifact was a

that used

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

to make personalized recommendations based on topics, news sources, and authors that the reader is interested in. In addition to reading articles, the app offered the ability to

like In English, the word ''like'' has a very flexible range of uses, ranging from conventional to non-standard. It can be used as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, particle, conjunction, hedge, filler, quotative, and semi-suffix. U ...

articles, leave comments, or listen to an audio version of an article read by AI-generated voices, including a simulation of the voices of

Snoop Dogg Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. ( ; born October 20, 1971), better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg), is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Rooted in West Coast hip-hop, he is widely regarded as one of t ...

Gwyneth Paltrow Gwyneth Kate Paltrow ( ; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and businesswoman. The daughter of filmmaker Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner, she established herself as a leading lady appearing in mainly mid-budget and perio ...

. AI also would rewrite

clickbait Clickbait (also known as link bait or linkbait) is a text or a thumbnail hyperlink, link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow ("click") that link and view, read, stream or listen to the linked piece of online cont ...

headlines that users flagged. Artifact later expanded to a social network where users could post links, images and text to their profile, which could be liked or commented on by other users. Similar to other

social news website A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these comm ...

s like

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, reader accounts had profiles with reputation scores.

References

External links

Interview with Systrom and Krieger about Artifact
by

Ben Thompson (analyst) Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst who lives in Taipei, where he founded ''Stratechery'', a subscription-based newsletter/podcast featuring commentary on tech and media news, and cohosts tech podcasts ''Sharp Tech ...

* * Android (operating system) software IOS software 2023 software Mobile applications News aggregator software Yahoo! acquisitions 2024 mergers and acquisitions {{Mobile-software-stub Defunct companies based in California