Building an app dedicated to helping people to consolidate and read news, articles and social media posts in one place is a tough proposal these days. Smashing, an AI-powered app that can curate news and posts that users want to read, is shutting down because it cannot scale rapidly.
“We simply didn't grow quickly enough to continue. We couldn't expand it to a sustainable product,” the company announced the closure in an email to customers.
Otis Chandler, founder of Goodreads, launched Smashing last June and aims to use AI and the community to curate news articles, blog posts, podcasts and social media posts from around the web. The app allows users to pursue their interests, submit content, vote for suggested content, and show their relevance. There were also AI-powered bots that could answer summaries and questions.
The company said in an email that seven employees are working on the product. Smashing raised $3.4 million in funding from True Ventures, Blockchange, Offline Ventures, Advancit Capital, Power of N Ventures, and several angel investors.
Thankfully there are a lot of startups tackling the issue. Feed in AI-powered newsreaders like Breaking News and Particles, as well as aggregator apps like Feeeed, Tapestry, and Reeder, and choose a few.
Smashing's closure comes after Instagram co-founder shut down AI-powered news app Artifact last year, and ultimately sold the technology to Yahoo.