If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know of Artifact, the news app that was quietly launched by the founders of Instagram a few months ago. There are a few reasons I am following it but mainly because the experiments they are running are reflective of the conversations I am having with news product leaders: personalisation, AI generated summaries, audio articles. 

Artifact is new and nimble. They are not creating their own content; they are  aggregating — likely simply scraping at the moment. And because they are not weighted down by legacy products and processes, they are able to use a lot of learnings from around the Web. Some of the efforts are reminiscent of some of the (flailing) social networks. 

In Artifact you can now view and follow specific writers. This makes it easier to follow people that may write for different publications. Writers can claim their profile, write their own profile, get notified when people comment on their articles and track analytics on their content. They even get a verification checkmark. Sound familiar?  

Right now users have to go through the article page to follow writers (see below). Maybe there will be a time when you can search for writers. Maybe have personalised recommendations. Maybe one day they could even charge for additional content. Are they coming for Substack and Patreon? 

There are also some basic functions, such as going through a list of writers to add them, which would make it a lot easier to follow people.

Also, regular Artifact users may have noticed a new link icon popping up on the main bottom navigation a few weeks ago.

If you click on that link, it brings you to a page of curated links and articles from people you follow.

Getting started is a little clunky as you can’t “add” people through the app. See the screenshots below. If I want to invite Jeff (Hi Jeff!), it sends me outside the app. That feels clunky. Perhaps it’s deliberate to invite only people you know. But adds limitations to flooding people’s inboxes or — perhaps worse — not allowing for relatively anonymous following.

Being able to save articles and following people reminds me of Pinterest, only for text. 

So is Artifact a news app? Or is it an app to help you organise a messy Web to the way you like it? Only time will tell.

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