Otis Chandler, cofounder and former CEO of Goodreads, is amongst those that have launched Smashing, a brand new studying app that may present a every day feed of stories, podcasts, and social media posts based mostly on customers’ pursuits. At the moment, the app is simply obtainable on Apple iOS.
The app employs each AI and human curation to find out which tales are a finest match for its viewers, with content material suggestions linking on to the unique publishers’ websites. It additionally features a function known as Smashing AI Questions, which offers AI-powered contextual prompts resembling “present all sides,” “tear this aside,” and “make it humorous,” to change the angle of a given set of content material.
Smashing is creating a “neighborhood of curators” who will supply their takes on a given topic, with customers being able to vote on a given curator’s style and reliability. Every curator’s popularity might be measured in “Curator Factors.” The highest curators on the app, per a Smashing press launch, embrace “achieved journalists, entrepreneurs, media executives, software program engineers, authors, and extra.”
“Folks on-line are drowning in an ever-rising sea of content material,” Chandler stated. “With Smashing, I believe we’ve come throughout a successful mixture of individuals curating and an AI matching content material to readers. The web is brimming with extra attention-grabbing articles, podcasts, and tweets than ever earlier than. They’re simply tougher to search out. That is what Smashing is all about—serving to individuals discover and share the perfect of the perfect of their pursuits.”
Different buyers in Smashing embrace Greg Veen (cofounder of Typekit, acquired by Adobe, and MeasureMap, acquired by Google), Michael Mraz (previously of Condé Nast, Cool Looking, and Hearst), and Dan Barrett (software program architect & LLM whisperer). Smashing is backed by enterprise capital buyers Advancit Capital, Blockchange, Offline Ventures, Energy of N Ventures, and True Ventures, in addition to numerous angel buyers.
