Artifact News: What is a social network?

Thinking about startups (Do all roads lead to Saas?)

I was talking to a coder friend a few years ago. He’d worked on a slew of different startups. All of them were Saas or Saas-adjacent. And to my young twenty-something mind (raised watching “The Social Network” and believing the only thing that mattered was building for the biggest possible audience) all these Saas companies sounded incredibly boring. So I asked my friend:

“Why don’t you ever work on building a social media company?”

His answer was telling.

He said: “I don’t want to work on something where it’s all just down to chance. You don’t know what’s gonna go viral. So you’re just building, and you hope it hits. And you have no control over that. But if you build something for businesses that they need, it’s a lot easier to make money.”

The more I’ve floated around the entrepreneurship space, the more I’ve realized that tradeoff is fundamental. Building something that can make money vs. building something that can be really impactful.

Today (after this extremely long intro) I want to take a look at a company that’s choosing the second option. In a time of tumult and rapid change in social media, Artifact is trying to build something new, impactful…and different.

Artifact: News (is history)

If you’ve heard anything about Artifact, you’ve probably heard about its founders. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are best known as the original co-founders of Instagram. They made money on its acquisition by Facebook (now Meta), but they haven’t been heavily involved with the company’s direction for several years.

In February of this year, the duo announced they had launched Artifact as an “AI news app”. A place where stories would be curated for users by an AI algorithm similar to recommendation engines on TikTok and other platforms.

The idea sounded interesting. So I downloaded it.

This is where it’s probably best for me to disclose that I used to work at Facebook. In fact, I worked on the News team, and a lot of my job was keeping up with changes in the media ecosystem.

The reality is that it’s not a great time to be a media company. It hasn’t been for years. Independent newspapers and websites struggle to compete for traffic against juggernauts like Youtube, Twitter…and Facebook.

Although those platforms do admittedly throw traffic at news sites, the reality is that lots of small publications have failed to adapt, struggled with online monetization, and as a result journalism employment is way down.

I liked the idea that Artifact’s AI recommendation engine could change the paradigm of news discovery. Expand access to more niche news content, showing users articles that were right for them, even if they might not have found that content otherwise.

Basically I wanted Artifact to do for news what TikTok did for viral dance videos.

Artifact finds its ambition

When I first downloaded Artifact though, what I saw was not all that impressive. I was being recommended articles. But that’s exactly what happens on Google News, and Facebook News for that matter. I didn’t see much “transformative AI” at work here.

I also didn’t notice a difference in what I was being recommended. It was mostly articles from the New York Times, Politico, the Economist. Publications I was very used to seeing on traditional platforms. I’m assuming this was an intentional curation decision aimed at preserving the quality of content on Artifact. But it also limited the platform’s potential transformative impact.

And so, very quickly, the app became just another “news notification” that pinged me articles every now and again.

Whatever, basically.

Then a few weeks ago, things changed.

Artifact recently announced it was allowing users to post links of their own.

So… I dove back in.

If the app before was a tweak on Google News, this new spin is a combination of Twitter and Reddit. With none of the political baggage from either platform. Right now Artifact still feels very small. It’s mostly tech people and early adopters toying around with the features. Basically, people like myself seeing what this thing is and what it might become.

Users can posts links to their own sites, as well as others. “Text posts” currently still require an image to be attached for…some reason?

And as far as I can tell there’s still no way for users with regularly updated websites (like The Weekly One Pager *cough cough*) to add their website to the pool of content being recommended in the “headlines” section. We plebs just have to post our article links individually and hope they gain traction…just like on every other platform.

If they really go for it…

Frankly the thing I like most about Artifact right now is the possibilities. As far as I can tell, the founders have yet to take any venture funding (being rich is one of the benefits of having started Instagram!). And for me, that means they’re still experimenting. Seeing what they can build. What works, what’s exciting, and what really shakes things up.

The other benefit of being rich is you don’t just have to build a boring, practical product. You can take risks. Swing for the fences. And create something that’s not just profitable, but also impactful.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen big change in social media. With Twitter’s rapid X-ification, Facebook on a decade long decline, and TikTok always at risk of political boycott, maybe this is the moment for a change.

For my part I’m just hoping Artifact really goes for it. No one needs another Apple news, agreggating pre-approved content from big names. Artifact should let small creators submit their site’s RSS feeds for wide distribution, and enable transformative discovery.

Of course I do have some of my own skin in the game. But also…wouldn’t it be awesome to see a new, ambitious, place for discovery and viral distribution of the written word?

I may be biased. But I think that sounds pretty awesome.

Until next time. This has been,

The Weekly One Pager