Smashing, a brand new app curating the most effective of the net from Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler, is now available to the general public. Like Goodreads, the app goals to create a community around content. But this time, as a substitute of books, the main target is on web content — like news articles, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, and more. As well as, Smashing is introducing an AI Questions feature that lets you engage with the content being shared in alternative ways, including by viewing a news story from different perspectives or asking the AI to poke holes within the story, amongst other things.
By viewing different angles of a story, you’ll be able to see how each the political left and right view the topic. Or, within the case of an organization’s stock, you is likely to be presented with each the bull and bear case.
There are a very good handful of AI prompts available at launch, notes Chandler, and never all will make sense to make use of on every news story or piece of content. As an example, there’s a silly “make it funny” prompt, and others that may simplify the story, display a timeline, or introduce “unconventional” takes that will involve considering outside the box, helping you weigh ideas you hadn’t considered yet. You may as well ask your personal questions, in the event you prefer.
“I’ve been having fun, as an illustration, asking it to put in writing me a podcast script, after which plug that into Notebook LM, then hearken to it within the automotive,” Chandler says.
On the app, users are capable of create multiple interest feeds to remain informed concerning the topics that matter to them, like politics, investing, parenting, health and wellness, and more, and even narrower interests like specific corporations, sports teams, crypto, climate change, or other subtopics.
The app also leverages AI to surface content from around the net after which match it to a person reader based on what articles they have an inclination to read, what subtopics they like, and what’s already popular in the neighborhood, as determined by upvotes and downvotes. Combined, the signals tune Smashing to a user’s particular interests.
As a part of the AI Questions feature, Smashing can be introducing AI-powered Story Overview pages, which provide grouped articles, blog posts, and social media posts all concerning the same story.
Since announcing plans for Smashing this summer, the startup has signed up greater than 2,000 people on its waitlist and has just a few thousand or so testing the beta version. Since then, Chandler says, its AI algorithms have “vastly” improved, due to fine-tuning, a greater user experience that lets readers mark if things are interesting or not, a bigger community of curators, and overall improvements from the rapidly evolving LLM models available.
Smashing is initially available in iOS and has an internet version in development. The startup is backed by $3.4 million in seed funding from True Ventures, Blockchange, Offline Ventures, Advancit Capital, Power of N Ventures, and various angel investors.
