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Goodreads ‘ co - founderOtis Chandleris back to build up the next liberal app residential area . But this metre , his focus is n’t on Bible ; it ’s on the content you could incur online , including news article , blog post , societal media posts , podcasts and more . WithSmashing , an AI and community - power content recommendation app , now launching into an take in - only beta , the finish is to assist connect substance abuser to their involvement by come on the internet ’s out of sight precious stone .
The launching come at a clip when many news consumer are still bewail the loss ofArtifact , the AI news reader from Instagram ’s co - founder thatrecently soldto TechCrunch parent Yahoo .
Chandler believes Smashing can address many of these trouble by not only surfacing the articles and posts that are worth people ’s time but also promote user to visit the publishers ’ internet site to translate more .
“ I namedGoodreads‘Goodreads ’ and not ‘ Goodbooks ’ because I one twenty-four hours hoped to add articles , ” Chandler said . As it rick out , “ book ” was a big enough family on its own to hold the app , whichsold to Amazonin 2013 . Chandler continue to work there until five years ago .
The Smashing CEO says he always had an “ itch to itch around the relief of the subject matter on the web , which is not just clause . ” It ’s podcasts , blogs , news show articles , tweet , societal media posts and YouTube video , he say . “ Any interesting substance . ”
What inspire him to start build Smashing , however , was an experience he had during his sabbatical from work following his exit from Amazon . After a month or two of downtime , Chandler decide to dispute himself by get in aHalf Ironmantriathlon .
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“ That led me down a journey of , ‘ Oh , I ’ve got to learn about training and bicycling , and how to remain in shape and not incinerate my legs out , and how to eat right for nutrition , how to , therefore , falsify good , because I did n’t know how to cook before that , ” he said . But , when judge to expend a traditional search engine , it was grueling to find the best content . “ If you just Google , ‘ how to prepare for a Half Ironman Triathlon ’ or ‘ how to eat healthy , ’ you get a lot of contentedness . But it ’s not the content you ’re really looking for . It ’s a lot of SEO - optimized , advert - stuffed pages . ”
To hear to find the content he want , Chandler tried news aggregators , like Apple News and Google News , Reddit , Twitter , social mass medium and other humble and average - sized apps .
“ I render everything I could find oneself , and I was really disgruntled with the answers I get . I could n’t see anything I could dial to give me just good , interesting , accurate subject matter . And that led me to the dissertation for Smashing , ” Chandler said .
He then teamed up in 2022 with a former co - worker , Greg Veen , now a Smashing co - founder , whose tech background includes set up Measure Map , which sold to Google , and Typekit , which exited to Adobe .
build over the last year , following a seminal fluid round , Smashing ’s iOS app have users follow their interests in a mode that ’s reminiscent of another AI news app , Artifact , but with a broader focus . Users can submit their own mental object and riffle up and down the app ’s AI - powered recommendations of content shared by others and aggregated from the entanglement . However , it ’s not only limited to newsworthiness : Anything with a universal resource locator can be submitted .
like toDigg , a news program aggregatorfrom the Web 2.0 geological era , users can vote up the subject matter they think is interesting and merit attention . But users will only get 30 votes per day , which they can spend all on one amazing article , or distribute across a wider number of links , depending on their orientation .
As with Artifact , users can wish , save and remark on articles , too , which further helps come on the best subject .
AI engineering in Smashing offers sum-up of the tidings , key excepts and interesting pull quotes . AI also helps to describe topics and threads of interestingness to individual users , but the veridical “ magic happens , ” Chandler says , by make a community that works in conjunctive with the AI .
But despite its utilisation of AI , Chandler argues that Smashing should drive traffic to online publisher , not lessen it . “ We really designed Smashing to be something that help you curate interesting , retentive - anatomy cognitive content and drives readers to it . We ’re not attempt to be an mass substitute for read it . I know a lot of people are play with that kind of manakin , ” he said . “ But , no surprise to you , having done Goodreads , I ’m a worshipper in foresightful - form , interesting content . There ’s a narrative out there that the net is increasingly full of junk . And I think the internet is more and more full of gems that have to be unearthed . ”
Smashing is launching intoan ask for - only private genus Beta , starting Tuesday .
The startup , also co - founded by Mike Mraz ( Condé Nast , Cool Hunting , Hearst ) , and Dan Barrett ( software designer with LLM expertise ) , has $ 3.4 million in seed financial support from True Ventures , Blockchange , Offline Ventures , Advancit Capital and Power of N Ventures , as well as angel investors including Balaji Srinivasan , James Currier ( NFX ) , Stan Chudnovsky ( Facebook ) , Chad Byers ( Susa Ventures ) , Gil Elbaz ( Factual , AdSense ) , Abe Burns ( boring Rush Ventures ) , Adam Jackson ( Braintrust ) , Bryan Goldberg ( Bustle ) and Ben Rattray ( Change.org ) .
