is Artifact from Instagram creators worth your time?

If people have a good idea once, will they succeed again? We expect that a bit with large, well-known brands, but that certainly does not always have to be the case. The people who invented Instagram created Artifact, an app that lets you take in and share the news in a social media-like way. Is it something? You can read it in this edition of App of the Week.

artifact

Artifact is an app that uses artificial intelligence to create a kind of timeline of news that interests you. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger came up with this app to give you a personalized real news experience. You can also link your subscriptions to major publishers in the app, but if you don’t, you will still see all kinds of headlines. However, the app is currently still very focused on the United States, so you have to make do with the news that is especially relevant there (and also in English).

For that reason, Artifact is currently not very interesting for many Dutch or Belgians. Of course, this news can certainly also interest you, but for a broad picture of current affairs it would be nice to be able to add some more Dutch-language media. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of things now: you probably want to know how the app is structured. You don’t have to create a profile, but the app does want to know what your interests are. For example, I don’t need to know what the latest celebrity news or sports news is, but of course I find tech news interesting, plus science, women’s fashion, climate, nature and travel. Then I only see topics in the timeline that I have marked as my interests.

App of the Week

There is also a middle tab, where you can find the news items of the media you are subscribed to. However, it only really starts when you start reading a bit more. At first, try your best to only tap things that you find really interesting, because the algorithm is what the Artifact magic is. At a certain point it learns what your real preferences are and then, just like the ads on Instagram, it must become very applicable to you what you are presented with.

In itself, the idea behind Artifact is very clever and it could work, but at the moment I would not immediately recommend it for Dutch people. Especially if English isn’t quite your language. By the way, there is a social media angle: you can comment on articles and forward the topics to other people. Plus: you can follow people and see which news items they find interesting. But first the app needs to grow a bit.

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Have you already tried Artifact, what do you think? Leave it now in the comments.

App of the Week

You’ll find one every Monday at Androidworld Best apps of the week and every Saturday we discuss an app in our section app of the week. If you are looking for fun apps, then you’ve come to the right place at Androidworld. Search our large database of apps using the links below.