Instagram Co-Founders’ Platform Artifact Now Allows Users to Create Posts
Artifact, a platform built by Instagram’s co-founders, is launching the ability for users to make posts. Up until now, the platform has been an aggregator for news and links, but is now becoming more of a social network by allowing users to create posts. Artifact co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger announced the launch of the new feature at today’s Code Conference.
New Feature: Creating Posts
With this new feature, users will be able to post their own content directly on Artifact without needing to include a link. The company wrote in a blog post that the new feature builds on the recent launch of Links, which lets anyone share a URL they believe is notable enough to resonate with other readers. This also feeds into the personalization algorithms, helping people discover new content they may not have otherwise.
How to Use the New Feature
Users can get started with the new feature by tapping the “+” icon on the top right corner of the Links tab. From there, you can add your own images, title and text. Artifact notes that you can post whatever you’d like, including restaurant reviews, how-to guides, family recipes, app breakdowns, design inspo and more.
Visibility and Sharing
Artifact explains that just like links, your posts will appear in the visual feed of content shared by the community. Posts will be distributed to your followers and be shown to anyone on Artifact who has read on similar topics. All posts have a unique URL that can be shared with anyone, which will make it easier to share them on different platforms.
Expansion into Social Networking
The launch shows that Artifact is expanding beyond simply being a news aggregator service and that the company is interested in competing with social networks. Although Artifact had been gradually moving towards social networking territory, the new Posts feature brings Artifact directly into competition with established social networks like X (formerly Twitter) and Meta’s Threads.
Further Insights from Artifact CEO
Today’s announcement comes a week after Artifact co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom spoke onstage at GamingIdeology Disrupt 2023. The executive said that Artifact is still exploring product-market fit and believes that machine learning, LLM (large language models), and mobile are key to the app’s potential success. However, Systrom also mentioned that the startup is trying to figure out how to achieve scale. He also expressed his belief that AI technology will empower people rather than causing negative impacts.