The co-creators of Instagram have launched Artifact, a text-based version of TikTok

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have come back to the tech world with a new venture that is set to explore ideas for next-generation social apps. The first product of this venture is a personalized news feed called Artifact. This app uses machine learning to understand the interests of users and to provide them with articles that they may find interesting. It also has a feature which will soon allow users to discuss these articles with friends. 

The app is designed to be a kind of TikTok for text, and it will feature a ranked feed of articles from a curated list of publishers, including leading news organizations and small-scale blogs about niche topics. Artifact will also have a feed showing articles posted by users that the signed-up user follows, along with commentary on these posts. There will also be a direct message inbox feature which will enable users to discuss the posts they read with friends in private. 

Systrom and Krieger have been discussing the idea for Artifact for some time, and Systrom has gained confidence in the ability of machine-learning systems to improve recommendations after his experience at Instagram. The duo had to wait for a big new wave in consumer technology, a way to connect to this wave through social technology, and an idea for how their product could solve a problem before they could go ahead with their plans. 

Artifact provides a unique solution to the problem of finding interesting content, and it could mark a return to the days of text-based social networks. It will be interesting to see how this app fares in the competitive world of social media.