On Tuesday, Yahoo has obtained the Artificial news platform known as ‘Artifact’ which is developed by two of the co-founders of Instagram, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. The partnership will let Yahoo to use the advanced technology of Artifact across the online news and services in US.
The acquisition reflects the current challenges faced by the new media companies in obtaining revenue and trying to dominate after facing stiff competition from their rivals and big tech giants such as Meta Platforms and Alphabet(which is a multinational conglomerate company of Google).
Yahoo on the acquisation of Artifact
In the last year, a blogpost stated that the officials of Artifact are going to close down the company and their operations due to the app’s limited market possibilities. Then, suddenly Yahoo who owns popular news platform and services such as Yahoo finance, Techgadget and Engadget showed interest in Artifact and praised the Artificial news as a important addition to their news and online services which can generate huge sales revenue and can also deliver customized content to the audiences.
Meanwhile, Yahoo also holds some minimal share in content suggestion platform like Taboola which was acquired by Apollo Global Management, a private investment firm in 2021. However, the officials of Yahoo did not release any financial details of this acquisition.
What is Artifact?
It was a customized online news application which was first launched in 2023 by two of the co-founders of Instagram Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom who was also a board member of Wallmart.
The name ‘Artifact’ is derived from the mixture of the words ‘articles’,’artificial intelligence’, and ‘fact’. The app features that it uses advanced artificial technology to make customized or personalized recommendations to people based on their choice of topics, news sources, and the authors that the audience usually likes to read.
In addition, the app let the users leave their thoughts on a comment box and also the ability to like the articles they like or listen to the audio version of the same content generated through the voices of the famous rapper Snoop Dogg or the famous actress and Academy Award winner Gwyenth Paltrow.
Later, the officials of Artifact made it more user-friendly by allowing people to post their articles, links, text, and images to their profile which could be commented on or liked by other users. It follows the same pattern as other social media news websites like Reddit which allowed its users to have reader accounts and profiles with popularity scores.
Who is Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger?
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is one of the most famous names and figures in the world of technology and entrepreneurship. They are best known to be co-founders of the popular photo sharing social media app Instagram. They started their journey and respective careers from Silicon Valley.
Kevin Systrom (born in 1983) is an American computer programmer who graduated with a degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University which is one of the most famous and largest universities around the world and it is located in Stanford, California.
Systrom’s main interest in coding and programming made him a special candidate and led him to get internship opportunities at various famus companies such as Google where he worked as a product marketer and Odeo which eventually changed into the famous social media website known as Twitter.
Mike Krieger (born in 1986) is a Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer who also studied at the same university as Kevin Systrom where he completed Symbolic Systems which mainly focused on Human-Computer interactions.
His skills in design and technology led to the introduction of Instagram’s user-friendly interface. Before co-foundering Instagram, Kreiger worked on various new ventures where he tested his skills as a computer designer and developer.
Both Systrom and Krieger decided to leave Instagram after it merged with Meta Platforms in 2018 and also due to heated tensions between the them and Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
