To be fair, co-founder Kevin Systrom seems to think it’s still probably going to die. But he told TechCrunch that he and Mike Krieger are “exploring all possible routes for it going forward.” The Instagram co-founders did some really clever stuff with Artifact, before seemingly getting a little ahead of themselves with social features — maybe going back to basics will keep Artifact going. I hope so!
I went on the Waveform podcast this week to talk about productivity apps, getting stuff done, to-do lists, and the true chaos that is just using your Alarms app to remind you to do stuff. I think Marques and I successfully fixed Andrew... but we’ll see.
The AI search tools are getting better — but they don’t yet understand what a search engine really is and how we really use them.
ESPN’s digital plan is sort of all over the place. It’s building a streaming version of the cable network, it’s part of the “Hulu for Sports” coming later this year, and now it’s offering listings for some local sports — though you’ll still have to subscribe to your network and watch the actual games separately. Odd!
ESPN has long talked about being something along the lines of a TV guide for streaming sports; seems like this is what it looks like.
I reread this massive Wired piece this morning on the train, a propos of, you know, things. It’s an incredible tale of antitrust warfare, and it’s wild how much of what the DOJ said and did about Microsoft rhymes with today’s lawsuit against Apple.
I’d bet that Tim Cook saying “buy your mom an iPhone” will become an iconic legal phrase the way “cut off Netscape’s air supply” did 25 years ago.
