Kevin Systrom:

We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product. We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way.

Sad to hear this, but not a surprise. I liked Artifact but didn’t end up making it a part of my daily habit. We did some custom work for Air Mail to be included in the app as well but it never drove much traffic at all. Something “a core group of users” love sounds like a small batch of regular users to me.

News and information remain critical areas for startup investment. We are at an existential moment where many publications are shutting down or struggling, local news has all but vanished, and larger publishers have fraught relationships with leading technology companies. My hope is that technology can find ways to preserve, support and grow these institutions and that these institutions find ways of leveraging the scale that things like AI can provide.

I still agree with this. Something I’m continuing to work on as well.